>> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. first up on msnbc, russia meddling 2.0, now trying to apparently help the bernie sanders campaign. this after that bomb shell report that russia has begun interfering to help get trump reelected. new reaction, no details. it's officially here, caucus day. candidates making their final pitches out west. the big goal, avoiding the repeat. lindsey reiser is on the ground in las vegas. released, michael bloomberg says he will let at least three women out of their nondisclosure agreements. what does that mean going forward. deadlocked, the jury in the harvey weinstein trial undecided on the two top counts, what that

means for the former movie mogul next. >> and with that, we say good morning, saturday, february 22nd. i'm corey kaufman, alongside can d -- kendis gibson. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, we are seven hours from caucus sites opening up across this state. the energy here is palpable. it is top of mind for nevadans right now. 75,000 people have cast their ballots. is that going to be an indication of what's to come or are we maybe going to see the opposite because so many people have caucused. there are 36 pledged delegates up for grabs in a tight and still crowded democratic field. last night, i attended an elizabeth warren rally in las vegas. she came out swinging in our debate this week with michael bloomberg. we'll hear from voters both who have committed to her already and who are still undecided about what they are looking for in a candidate. we are also going to talk to a

senior adviser to the state democratic party about what they are doing to ensure we don't see more caucus chaos like what we saw in iowa. we have a lot to go over this morning. i'm happy to be here with you both. >> seven hours still to go before they get to the votings. our thanks to lindsay. we'll check back with you. the brand new reporting about russian interference in the 2020 election. this time, senator bernie sanders confirming officials telling his campaign russia is actively trying to help him win. >> "the new york times" reports that u.s. intelligence officials gave a warning to house lawmakers that russia is meddling to once again help president trump get elected. nbc white house correspondent hans nichols joins us now. how are both camps reacting to this, president trump and senator sanders? >> differently. from the president he had a rally out west yesterday and he seemed to be down playing these reports and from bernie sanders when he was confronted with them, he confirmed that his campaign had been contacted by

officials telling him that russia is trying to help tip the scales on his behalf, and then he had a strong and stark warning for russia to back it off. so listen to their two different approaches and then we'll talk on the back end. >> it's disinformation. that's the only thing they're good at. they're not good at anything else. do nothing democrats. that putin wants to make sure i get elected. listen to this, so doesn't he want to see who the democrat is going to be? wouldn't he rather have, let's say, bernie? wouldn't he rather have bernie? >> the intelligence community has been clear. whether trump recognizes it or not or acknowledges it or not, they did interfere in twi2016, intelligence community tells us they are interfering in this campaign right now in 2020, and what i say to mr. putin, if elected president, trust me, you are not going to be interfering in american elections. >> now, according to "the

washington post," the president had been briefed at least on some of the information about bernie sanders. when the president was speaking there he hadn't seen the report. the report hadn't come out from the "washington post" that bernie sanders campaign was being helped by russia and that was the intelligence there. so the president might not have been dealing with all the information when he had that. this is going to be a challenge for his new acting director of national security, richard grenell. the president dismissed joseph maguire. he had been interim and the acting at dni. he dismissed him in part because the president was angry about what he heard in the briefing to house lawmakers on what russia was doing in 2020. this isn't going back. this isn't 2016, this is looking forward. this is a challenge for richard grenell. he is the ambassador to germany, and he is a political type, and there is concern from house speaker nancy pelosi and others that you're putting someone with that much political experience not necessarily all the

intelligence experience in that position. so a real challenge for mr. grenell. >> most note worthy, grenell is a loyalist to the president, that's perhaps why he got to that positionme that position. hans nichols thank you. susan del percio, msnbc political analyst, and republican strategist. and hayes brown, good morning to both of you. >> good morning. >> susan i want to start with you on all of this. what do you make of the two reactions. >> i wasn't surprised by either one. the president is one to lie, as we know. i think they're up to 16,000 lies or 15,000 lies recorded by fact checkers at "the washington post," and at his rallies, the president spews off whatever is off the top of his mind. bernie sanders treated the information as classified which he was supposed to. what was disappointing is the flippant remark he made at the

end of the press conference, which was basically why don't you think it came out now, and he made a comment about "the washington post" and having it be a day before the nevada caucus as if it was a politically motivated thing. that's very unfortunate. it's unfortunate for our country. we need to have true belief in our elections and that it's secure and the point about the incoming dni, rick grenell, is very interesting because he has no background whatsoever in intelligence or management. so that's a disaster. >> who was bernie alluding to might have planted this? >> well, it wasn't so much. that was what was so disturbing. i don't think he was implying that the president's team did it. i think he was implying that the media may be out for him because he has been -- i mean, people criticize him, and he doesn't like it. he's very similar to the president in that way, frankly. he's angry, and he yells back

and wants to say, you know, this is false information. >> we have seen leaks coming from these highly classified briefings and somehow they keep getting out to media, to the chagrin of the sanders campaign or at least what their reaction is to it, their official reaction. hayes, i'm wondering if you find the timing suspect. we mentioned the fact that these are classified bits of information. maybe he couldn't say much but he has been holding on to it for a month now. is there anything he could have done. >> he kind of did a little bit in the debate, teased out that maybe some of these people, the bernie bros that everyone has been attacking lately for their attacks against various officials including the culinary union in nevada, maybe they are russian bots trying to stir up chaos, and when he said that at the time, a lot of people were extremely skeptical because the phenomenon of bernie sanders

supporters going after people online has been documented for three, four years now. this report shows that, well, he kind of was hinting at that a little bit during the interview on the tarmac, bernie sanders was asked when did you first learn about this, about a month ago. he had been holding on to that as susan pointed out, it was likely a classified situation where he received a briefing and was told don't put this in the public. once it was in the "washington post" report, he confirmed it. he has known about this for a minute now. i think this was probably the best way it could be handled. i'm sure there will be a lot of monday morning quarterbacking on this one though. >> and one thing to play up on that. there is one other thing he did which was very important and so unlike the president. he did immediately come out and say russia do not meddle in our elections. i will hold you accountable. this is unacceptable. he didn't deny it, didn't pretend it didn't exist, and he didn't keep it low key. he did exactly what every president, anyone who's running

for president or the president should do. >> what do you think is the motivation, particularly with ber bernie sanders and the russians there. >> the russians meddle in our elections for a host of reasons. one could be they see, they're reading trump's tea leaves, he wants to run against bernie sanders. maybe that's the best way to keep trump in office. the other thing that's way more important is they like to create uncertainty and have the american public not trust one of our basic most important pillars of our democracy. >> in 2016, the sanders campaign was one of the camps russia was told, don't attack the sanders campaign. leave him and trump alone, then we support, according to the mueller team's investigation. the fact is they do justme to s chaos. they want everyone to be who are

bernie supporters is all of this fake. >> it's so easy to then attack the bernie sanders campaign if he does end up becoming the nominee, and pin trump against this socialist agenda. >> it is, but it's also important that at the end of the election, the russians can be successful if people don't feel that the elections were secure and the integrity of our american elections are there. >> then they can go back to there people and say look, even the americans don't have fair and free elections, why do you want that. >> people are troubled when the president jokes. >> it's dangerous. he is truly dangerous to protecting our democracy. >> interesting times we live in. >> thank you so much for being here. as we mentioned, it is officially now caucus day in nevada, with more than 70,000 votes already cast during the early voting period this week. officials there are now working to make sure this process runs smoothly and there is no repeat of the iowa debacle.

>> most candidates racing across the state trying to get ahead of this next contest and this next primary. right now, senator bernie sanders that has the lead in nevada in the polls with 30%. followed by pete buttigieg and joe biden closely on his heel. 17 and 16%. >> a good number of candidates are going to be starting the day in nevada before moving on to other states. michael bloomberg isn't on the nevada ballot but his campaign making headlines, offering to release three women from the n nondisclosure agreement. in a statement we want to offer confidenty agreements. >> bloomberg's move comes after senator elizabeth warren blasted the ndas during the debate hammering bloomberg repeatedly on stage in las vegas friday night, and warren posted to her strong debate performance as a threat to president trump.

>> if anyone doubts whether or not i can fight him on a debate stage, i think we have the video from wednesday. i think there's a 50/50 chance that donald trump looks at debating me and doesn't even show up. >> joe biden also in las vegas last night rallying the crowd when he criticized sanders' medicare for all plan and insists he's the one to show up obama. >> a public option, medicare if you want it. if you want it. if you want it. and if you can't afford it, you get it for free. and by the way, i can get it done. i can get it passed. i've done it. >> pete buttigieg addressing his record with black voters in an event in vegas, acknowledging his missteps in appealing to voters of color.

>> there are also a lot of times we didn't get it right. there were things i could not see because i don't have the lived experience of being treated differently because of the color of my skin. that's the promise that i will make, that i will always show up. i will always listen. i will always learn and these voices will be elevated and empowered in my white house just as they are in my campaign. in vegas, tom steyer sticking to his message that washington needs to work for people beyond the beltway saying he'll take the power back. >> they have made it clear that they would like to continue to control the country from washington, d.c. that's what they want. and i have been saying all along we're going to take the power back and send it out to the people of the united states. this is our one chance. >> senator amy klobuchar in elko, nevada, challenging people to get out and vote and stand up for democracy.

>> it's our job to stand up for democracy, you have a job tomorrow to caucus and be your own jury here, we even have a bigger job as you go out and talk to your friends and neighbors and maybe people that haven't been that involved before or have fallen out of love of politics because of all the negativity, it's your job really to be the messengers for our democracy. >> also bernie sanders hitting on democracy in his speech to las vegas voters saying at the end of the day, getting president trump out of office is at the top of his list. >> yeah, we disagree on issues. that's called democracy. we disagree on issues. but we cannot disagree that the president of the united states is simply not the kind of man that we need to have in the white house. >> lindsey reiser is covering all of this for us from las vegas this morning where there's intense scrutiny of the third

voting contest of the year. >> you have had your eyes and ears down there, what are you seeing? >> reporter: well, of course there is a lot of fear about interference in the election, particularly the news has dropped that the russians are trying to interfere in the primary. i spoke to a senior adviser of the state democratic party about what they are doing to protect the process, preserve the integrity of the caucusing, right down to the web site they are using to record the results, they are not disclosing that, they weren't as of yesterday because they didn't want that to become a target. i want bring in jonathan allen, nbc.com political analyst. how does this sanders, russia revelation change the energy and environment today? >> i think it's hard to know exactly. i think it's probably what's important for nevada where we've already seen so many people caucus early. obviously this doesn't affect votes that already went in. i think that senator sanders was

quick to distinguish or make a distinction between his reaction between potential russian interference and president trump's reaction. for most democratic voters, i think at least in the short-term will not change their opinion of him. if they liked him, they're not suddenly going to say to themselves, oh, my god, russia likes him, i don't like him anymore or vice versa. also it's important to remember that bernie sanders got help in 2016 according to u.s. intelligence officials from the russians. this isn't the first time, and that's information that voters already sort of have baked in that the chaos theory of russian intervention has included bernie sanders as a potential chaos candidate, and that is not affecting his success or at least has not prevented him from having discuss so far. i don't think it's going to have any effect in the short-term. we'll have to see about south carolina and super tuesday. >> reporter: i don't want to act like i know exactly what the motive is of picking bernie sanders, is that because they see him as the weakest

democratic candidate? >> i think in the first place in 2016 russia looked at him as a way of causing problems for hillary clinton and weakening her in the primary. and i'm not sure what vladimir putin's thinking now, and if i was, i would probably talk to u.s. authorities about it. switch lines. but i think that -- but i do think that there's a desire on the part of the russians to find whatever they can that causes conflict, and bernie sanders causes conflict within the democratic party because he's asking them to be something different than they have been, and the country is different than it has been. there is also on the other side potential because he's on the left end it's more clear for russia how that works for any other outside government. >> your latest article talks about the debate on nbc and msnbc about how the candidates came out swinging against michael bloomberg. has there been any fallout for

th his campaign from that night? >> there was a poll yesterday where he appeared to drop off about 3% in national polling. from democrats that i talked to, there's an expectation that he's really got to have a good performance in the south carolina debate next week. that he needs to reassure people who have been supportive of him or open to him because that was as bad as it gets. there were a lot of fights in las vegas, boxing, ultimate fighting, you name it, and that was like its own category of beat down. >> speaking of bloomberg, he just announced that he's going to be releasing three women from nondisclosure agreements so they are going to be able to talk freely about how they were treated at his company. do you think that's a desperate attempt to maybe sort of turn on some voters who were turned off by his responses at the debate regarding that subject? >> i think he's trying to find a way to stop that story line from continuing, and i think he's

trying to soufind a way to soun reasonable about nondisclosure agreements. the problem for him is this opens up a million new questions including are there women outside of the company that have nondisclosure agreements with michael bloomberg, will they be released from them if that's the case. >> and why just three? >> are there men that have nondisclosure agreements with michael bloomberg for various things other than harassment or whatever. i mean, this is the kind of drip drip drip story that i think is going to be difficult for him to have go away quickly. >> jonathan allen, thank you for joining us this morning, and we're going to hear more from voters about what they want to see before they caucus, that haven't cast their ballots and more on what the state party is doing, hiring paid employees at the call center to pick up the phones and avoid what we saw in iowa. >> trying as best they can. thank you so much, we'll be checking back in with you soon. coronavirus fears turning into panic, fuelling protests

around the world as the disease hits the 80,000 mark. an agreement between the u.s. and the taliban, what a new deal could mean for america's longest war. requires a little external soundproofing. or pnc total auto. a place online to easily find and finance the right car for you. and your passengers. or pnc home insight, to search for a new house within your budget. hopefully with a grass yard. pnc - make today the day.

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welcome back to msnbc world headquarters. that's not our headquarters. we're looking at this from our headquarters, the beautiful golden gate bridge there, about 3:24 in the morning. construction on the bridge, by the way, fun fact, started in the 1933. it opened to traffic four years later. . >> wow. >> it takes a lot longer. >> it really does. >> it is 56 degrees there right now, which is kind of lovely depend on how you feel about the winter so far. of course just after three this morning, temperatures expected to be in the 50s all day which i will take. breaking news in the meantime concerning the coronavirus. the number of confirmed cases outside of mainland, china. is rising, including right here in the u.s. right now, there are 36 cases

across the country. that number includes 18 people who spent nearly two weeks quarantined on the diamond princess cruise ship in japan. at last check, there are more than 76,000 cases of the virus worldwide and more than 2,300 people have died with new deaths reported in italy and iran. in the meantime chaos breaking out in cities across the globe and officials are blaming misinformation about the virus. nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel reports from hong kong. >> reporter: fears of coronavirus are reaching hysteria. in ukraine, the mobs came out, attempting to block a convoy of 72 people, mostly ukrainians who just returned from wuhan, china. even though their country men had been screened twice for infection. in south carolina, the number of infections doubled overnight to

200. nearly all of the cases tied to a secretive church considered a cult by other local christians. health officials say 500 more church members are showing symptoms and may be infected. many have gone underground. china remains the epicenter with millions forcibly confined to their homes. some living on the upper floors of apartment blocks getting food delivered in buckets on ropes. yet the virus still spreads. 30 countries and territories, nearly 80,000 cases. the world health organization unsure how far it will go. >> this outbreak could go any direction. >> while the virus does not appear to be highly lethal, rumors and misinformation are sowing panic. >> social media i think is often at its worst when we are at our most vulnerable. >> so people are spreading rumors about the coronavirus to get clicks?

>> i would hundred percent guarantee that. >> it's a scary thought. that was nbc's richard eng el reporting. also until the news, reduction of violence in afghanistan is officially underway and could lead to a peace deal involving america's longest war. matt bradley live in london. what have you been able to glean from the agreement. >> reporter: that's right, guys. afghan and american troops, they woke up this morning to an unfamiliar sound, quiet, and after more than 18 years, the guns may have mostly fallen silent as you mentioned on the longest war in u.s. history. that reduction in violence is held for more than 16 hours. so far, there have been no reports of any violations. the terminology is important. this isn't just a truce or cease fire. no one is expecting hostilities to end completely. the idea is if this reduction in violence lasts for at least a week, then the u.s. and taliban will get together on february 29th and sign a longer term

deal, and that could eventually lead to the permanent withdrawal of the more than 13,000 american soldiers who are still in afghanistan along with a lot of their nato allies who number in the thousands. this is all still a really big "if," there was a peace deal agreement in september, and the president scrapped it. that was after a major taliban terror attack but in the past, there have been some successful reductions in violence. that could mean good things back in june 2018, the taliban and afghan government had a cease fire. it's early in the process. barring major disaster, it looked for the moment that the u.s. is on the road to peace in afghanistan finally. guys. >> finally, after all these years, 19, almost 19-year-old war there in afghanistan. nbc's matt bradley, thank you. well, the president versus the court, how two separate legal actions by the president this week have george conway

comparing him to king kong. and lindsey reiser has much more from las vegas for us this morning. lindsey. >> reporter: yeah, last night i attended a get out the caucus block party at the clark county government center,mented about attendance. we're going to hear from voters who committed to warren is just wanted to see her, and undecided who wanted to hear what she had to say about key issues on health care, lgbt rights and issues affecting african-american people. we're going to be talking about that coming up in just a few minutes. ♪ limu emu & doug [ siren ] give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need!

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it's our most dangerous addiction. so we took our worst vice, and turned it into the dna for a better system. we created bionic and put the word out with godaddy. what will you change? make the world you want. welcome back, on february 22nd, a very important nevada caucus day. early voting has been underway. we are just a little bit less than nine hours away from the official caucuses starting. >> lindsey reiser is on the strip for us in las vegas and this early morning, we expect a

lot of people to hit the streets today, but they're hitting the streets right now for a whole other reason, i'm sure. >> reporter: yeah, let's not get to that, luckily we haven't had any major incidents with party goers, hopefully we'll keep that trend going. this race is significant in nevada for many reasons. nevada, an early caucus state, really one of the first states with a large diversity that we're going to be hearing from, as opposed to iowa and new hampshire. last night i attended an event here in nevada. it was a get out the caucus block party specifically for elizabeth warren and i talked to, of course, here you're looking at a break down of that voter population. i talked to the lot of voters about what they're looking for. we are through warren supporters, we have liked her for years, we want to see her tonight, see what she has to say. other voters said i came here tonight because of her performance in the debate on went night, the nbc msnbc

debate, where she came out swinging right from the get go. the last debate, i wasn't happy with my performance, i didn't feel like i showed voters how hard i can fight, how badly i want this. that was not the case this time around. a lot of people were saying i was impressed by what i saw, it was a glimpse of somebody who could take on donald trump potentially when november rolls around. there are a host of issues that are important to nevada voters. let's listen to some of them as they run the gamut. >> it matters when someone understands when the banks are pulling shenanigans. >> i'm here to find out what elizabeth warren is planning to do for the black community. first and foremost. that's my main concern. >> elizabeth warren was compassionate for the people in puerto rico. i didn't have electricity for six months in puerto rico. >> she's always straight to the point about everything and she seems to be the one that's

always put a little fear into trump in the beginning. >> reporter: all right so i want to bring in lynette hall and max gonzalez with the young democrats here in informed. good morning to both of you. thank you so much for joining me. lynette, let's start with you. you are already a committed amy klobuchar voter but you are going to be caucusing today. you haven't cast your ballot yet. tell me both why you're supporting amy and why you're caucusing today. >> for me, it's about experience. amy has a proven track record of being effective in the senate and throughout her career. i think she has the grit and the toughness to take on trump in november and actually beat him. for me, that's the main goal, and i think she's the best person to do that, and i also think that she has the ability to build a wide coalition of support across the country, which we need to win wisconsin, michigan, and all the states we need to beat trump. >> you heard me saying that a

lot of voters impressed with warren on her debate performance, how did you feel about how amy klobuchar did. the last debate she had a strong night, a lot of fundraising a lot of support, a great showing in new hampshire. do you think she did great? i thought she did great. i thought she stood up for herself, and answered the questions with the knowledge she brings to the table. she said she's been in the arena, and she knows what she's doing. we don't need someone on the job training so i think that she demonstrated that well in the debate, and i appreciated that. >> max, you are part of the same organization, but you are in camp biden. >> that's right. >> and you have cast your early ball lot. tell me why you have already early caucused and tell me why you're a biden supporter. >> when it came to early caucusing, i have to say that the nevada democratic party is really trying to help voters to go out and vote because i think

they understand that the whole caucus process isn't a very easy process for many people and voters have every day lives. they're trying to get people out there to participate in the process. the reason why i'm supporting biden is because he's a strong candidate and also this is a very unique election in which our main priority as democrats should be to removing donald trump from the white house. and biden has the ability to bring in a lot of people from across the voter spectrum when it comes to registered democrats and he is the candidate that is going to be able to do that in november. >> and of course biden not having as strong of a showing in iowa and new hampshire, hoping for the diverse vote in nevada. do you think that today, tonight, when the results come in hopefully tonight that basically you'll see what you want for your candidate, but you'll see that he was able to bring up that support? >> definitely. i am confident that vice president biden will be able to

bring in those voters that are here in nevada as nevada does really represent the rest of the country. iowa and new hampshire i would say personally does not represent the majority of democratic voters but nevada does and i'm sure biden will be able to really show his true strength here. >> and our viewers saw a break down of the numbers of previous years. 75,000 people have cast their early ballot. definitely will be interesting to see today whether that affects turnout and which way, of course, max and lynette, thank you for joining me this morning. we have two different perspectives here in nevada. it's really a glimpse of course of what we're seeing across the board. coming up we're going to really hone in on what is being done to protect the process, really make sure that the phone lines aren't being jammed of course by trolls like we saw in iowa. we're going talk about what they're doing to try and prevent things like that. >> they're looking at the iowa example and doing the complete

opposite, i assume, in nevada, they're trying to. >> not taking the app anymore. i mean, we've got early voting counts that have already started, of course that won't be released until we get the full results but we appreciate it. and sometimes the truth hurts when it's about president trump. often someone else feels the pain. up next, the latest casualties of the president's ire and why it could even include the nation's security. hello, i saw you move in, and i wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood with some homemade biscuits! >>oh, that's so nice! and a little tip, geico could help you save on homeowners insurance. >>hmm! >>cookies! uhh, biscuits. >>mmmm, is there a little nutmeg in there? oh it's my mum's secret recipe. >>you can tell me. it's a secret. >>is it cinnamon? it's my mum's secret recipe. call geico and see how easy saving on homeowners and condo insurance can be. i'll come back for the plate. no. uh uh, no way. ♪

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welcome back in, we are back with this morning's must reads. william mccraven is a four star retired admiral. he has been so affected by the news of this week that he came out defending former acting dni joseph maguire after maguire was reportedly fired after giving a briefing to lawmakers and found russian interference in the 2020 election. in a brand new op-ed, admiral mccraven wrote as americans we should be frightened, when good men and women can't speak the truth. when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matters when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security, there's nothing left to stop the triumph of e vifl. -- evil. asking will richard grenell destroy the intelligence community, but jonathan stevenson who writes we're used

to this president naming unqualified loyalists to high positions but this is not just another disparagement of the separation of powers. within the executive branch itself it is a calculated insult to the integrity and professionalism of the u.s. intelligence community. one that threatens to further impair the function of the sound intelligence collection and analysis. that is the information, u.s. policy and to politicize the relationship between the white house and intelligence agencies. >> we've got one more for you, george conway saying the trump's king kong nickname has come into full fruition. he writes in the "washington post" it reflects trump's desire to escape straits in particular legal constraints that conway urged was by two developments, the latest executive clemency spree and continued tax against the federal judiciary. joining us hayes brown, the world news editor i should say, a reporter for "buzz feed,"

thanks for having me. >> i want to start with add mccravens editorial, it was poignant and gave me chills. >> scathing. >> it was. let's talk about the fact he's going over the president's ego, saying there's a concern for national security. what's your take on that. >> i think admiral mcraven is entirely correct. such a well respected person in the national security sphere. he was the person who oversaw the raid that took down o osama bin laden. he makes a valid point that maguire for the fact that he was in the trump administration and was named acting dni by the president, he was never really someone who was on board the trump train. he was a professional in the intelligence community who really was willing to say when the ukraine stuff came over his desk over the course of the last summer into the impeachment inquiry, he was willing to say, like, if i'm called to testify,

i will testify and tell the truth, and he did behind closed doors. he spoke to the impeachment inquiry behind closed doors in a deposition, and i think that mcraven is right to say that for maguire to be forced out, for allowing this briefing to go to congress, which is wild to think that you would ever not want congress to know that russia is interfering potentially in 2020 u.s. election. the fact that he was allegedly fired for allowing that briefing to go forward spells out troubling things for what the intelligence community is and what it should be. >> yeah, he was doing his job. >> he was doing his job. >> the constraints on the intelligence community were put into place after watergate and the trump administration has been so determined to knock them down one by one, and shove those guardrails away. >> absolutely. let's follow up on that stevenson op-ed from the "new york times" because in it he says, and he warns of the dangers of a trump naming yet another loyalist in richard grenell who's the ambassador to

germany there, as the acting dni. is there anyone out there who looks at this appointment and doesn't see an issue? >> i assume their last name is trump if they are, because here's the thing, it really didn't hit me until i would say yesterday at one point, the president has appointed a loyalist to be in charge of the intelligence community, to say whether or not the intelligence coming into the cia, and all the other intelligence gathering operations within the u.s. government, the dni's job is to take that information, synthesize it and put forward, you know, a vision for what is happening in the world, and present that to the president so that the president and the executive branch as a whole can make informed decisions. if the person who is in that job is not someone who is willing to take the facts that come in and present them unvarnished to both congress and the president, that is a huge problem for actual decision making in this country. what do you do when you can't trust whether or not if the cia says, oh, we believe that, you know, pakistan is doing x, y, z

in comparison to india, if you can't trust that because you worry that it might play into say trump's wanting to go to india to get a new trade deal with modi, what do you do then? >> i will say thris as much as he's getting a lot of peak for his lack of intelligence experience there is a history fact that richard grenell being in the cabinet is the first openly gay person to serve in the u.s. cabinet and being named active dni. for whatever that is worth. >> that is out there, that is true, and he's also acting because they weren't sure they could get him through the senate, republicans telling the administration, we don't think he can be confirmed if you name it. >> and were trying to wave the president off. >> hayes brown, thank you so much for coming in with this insight. >> thank you. >> a deadlock reported in the trial of harvey weinstein. >> the jury says it has agreed on some of the counts against the movie mogul but not all. so could this mean for freedom for weinstein? uldn't be at my... ...best for my family. in only 8 weeks with mavyret...

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lot of uncertainty in the criminal trial of harvey weinstein this morning as jurors are deadlocked on some of the most serious charges against the former movie mogul. decisions have been made, we're told, in only three out of the five charges leveled against him. while the jury remains stuck on the two most serious counts of predatory sexual assault, weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies all the allegations of nonconsensual sex. >> so the worry is that with this nonunanimous decision on not having all the charges be unanimous, the historic case, which helped starlt the me too movement in 2016 could end in a mistrial. danny cevallos to help break it down. danny, what happens if that is the case? >> the most likely outcome is what's called a partial verdict because it seems they've reached th unanimity on some of the counts.

but they are deadlocked on the predatory sexuality assau predatory sexual assault count. the law disfavors these. they create a big mess. you know, at the appellate level. but it does mean that the defendant can be recharged on those hung counts. and, simultaneously, convicted on the convicted counts. but judges hate it. they'll deliver what's called an alan charge. go back in there, jury, and deliberate. really push. defense attorneys like me don't generally like that charge because we think it encourages the jury to hurry up and reach a verdict and that verdict is often guilty. >> what does it say about how his defense team has done? particularly, that young lady that you see there so far. >> donna rotunno i believe you are talking about. yes. i think they've done have very good job. this is a very challenging case because you have duty bound to challenge the credibility of these accusers but do so in a

way that's not overly harsh. i thought they did a good job. they exploited inconsistencies in their testimony and they did that very well. at the same time, it is always a challenge to defend against someone getting up on the stand, taking an oath, pointing at your client and saying that's the guy that did this to me. >> does having a partial verdict make it easier for the weinstein team to file these appeals and possibly be successful in it? >> any verdict of guilty is really difficult to overcome on appeal. generally speaking, you want a mistrial if that's the case, on all counts. but with a high-profile defendant like this, a mistrial isn't really the victory it is in an unknown defendant's case. because it's likely that the prosecution might want to prosecute that particular defendant again. >> danny, appreciate your being here. thank you. >> all right. sounding the alarm about the kremlin's latest role in influencing u.s. elections. two very different reactions from the president and bernie sanders and why russia may want

to help votes. >> and lindsey riser is live in las vegas just hours before the nevada caucuses get started. lindsey. >> yeah, guys, coming up, we are going to hear from tim hogan, the communications director for the amy klobuchar campaign about how she did in the debate and how she is trying to move momentum from new hampshire here to nevada today. we live in las vegas coming up. ♪ applebee's new irresist-a-bowls now starting at $7.99. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

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fresh up on msnbc. the russians are meddling again. but can the president handle the truth? and assumptions vladimir putin wants to bolster. >> countdown to the caucuses. lindsey reiser is on the ground to break it all down for us. >> evacuated from the diamond princess cruise ship amid fears about whether the coronavirus could become a pandemic in the u.s. >> and in custody, the mother of two missing children found in hawaii and taken into custody. the big question now, where are her kids? >> good morning to you, everybody. it is saturday, february 22nd. i'm candace gibson, alongside corey coffin, and lindsey reiser who is covering for us all things las vegas. lindsey. >> yeah. we are going to be talking about what state democrats are doing here to print an iowa debacle. hiring paid workers to pick up

the phones. and also not disclosing the sites they are going to be reporting results on. we are as going to be talking to one of our road warriors about biden's campaign. >> all right. we are going to have more from lindsey in just a moment but we want to begin with new reaction this morning on russia's attempts to interfere in the 2020 election. senator bernie sanders denouncing the kremlin last night after reports that russia trying to help his presidential campaign. >> the intelligence community has been very clear about it. whether trump recognizes it or not or acknowledges it or not, they did interfere in 2016. the intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign right now, in 2020. and what i say to mr. putin, if elected president, trust me. you are not going to be interfering in american elections. >> in the meantime, president trump at a las vegas rally over night dismissing intelligence reports that russia is meddling in the 2020 election to help him get re-elected.

>> they said, today, that putin wants to be sure that trump gets elected. here we go again. i was told a week ago, they said, you know, they're trying to start a rumor. it's disinformation. that's the only thing they're good at. they're not good at anything else. they get nothing done. do nothing democrats. that putin wants to make sure i get elected. >> all right. joining us now, jenna mclaughlin, national security reporter for yahoo news. and reporter for "the washington post." thank you for being in. my goodness. >> jenna, want to start with you. the president there calling a briefing given by senior intel officials to lawmakers on national security issues a rumor and disinformation. is that how national security officials actually see it? >> i think at this point, based upon some of the briefings that i've been in with the national counterintelligence center. reading, you know, public op-eds

from the top intelligence officials, yes, the russians have been continuing to meddle in the elections. they never really stopped. and a lot of that has to do with disinformation with sowing chaos. >> and, rhonda, your colleagues at "the washington post" broke this story about russia attempting to help bernie sanders. what more do we know about that? >> well, what we know is he -- and you saw it from the clip there when he's talking to reporters on the tarmac -- he came out, very strongly, saying that when he is president, he would stop this. and he tells putin, he appears to be talking directly to putin in that clip. saying to stop this. and when he -- when he -- sanders becomes president, that he will not allow this. so he came out very strongly. i think, right now, everyone is waiting to see if this is going to affect him in his standing right now as a front-runner. of course, we have the nevada caucuses in hours from now. so i think that's what the next part of this is is seeing how does this affect him moving forward? >> yeah. i think that voters really want

to know how his campaign is going to continue on as far as trying to thwart these efforts. jeb that, you wrote in an article saying quote intelligence experts are skeptical richard grenell as director of national intelligence is a good fit for the job. what have you been hearing from national intelligence officials on all that's happened in the dni's office this week? what's the reaction been like? >> absolutely. i mean, it's -- it's chaos at the top. many have compared it to a hollowing out, a decapitation, perhaps. there's no longer a full-time dni. there hasn't been one since late summer when dan coats left. there is no deputy dni. the official that the cia had sent to -- to odni to sort of act as the deputy before one could be nominated, has also left. there is no general counsel. so the dni is really sort of without top leadership. and while some intelligence officials might argue that that's a fair thing, you know, the cia used to lead the

community maybe is perfectly happy to not have a dni in charge. many others say this position was created after 9/11 to make sure something like that would never happen again. so it's a very important office that deals with all the money in the community, all the coordination in the community. and someone with large amounts of national security experiences is meant to be at the helm. >> so then that said, what level of danger does putting somebody like this, with no -- no, experience i see in there. >> that remains to be seen. i had seen reports that ambassador grenell had requested access to the intelligence underlying some of the recent reports about russian meddling. we will see how much he can do in a short period of time. also, he is still in germany. it's unclear whether he will do the job from germany. or whether he will try to do it from locally and return to

germany. it's an interesting scenario. >> rhonda, lawmakers on capitol hill received a briefing last week. from your reporting, are they taking that threat of russian interference with this upcoming election seriously? given all of the fallout that has now happened with the president. >> i think they are. and i think you're going to continue to see a few hearings, whether they be closed door or open hearings in the coming weeks about this issue. and we have to remember that if you go all the way back to when robert mueller testified in july, he talked about russia, potentially, interfering in this 2020 election. and then you had others during the public testimony phase of the impeachment. fiona hill mentioned it. she said russia is still very actively hoping to interfere in this next election. there were so many people throughout this year who have come in front of congress saying that this is a real threat. so i do think house democrats, probably, will bring this back up. i think the house judiciary committee will be one of the

committees that you're going to see bring this back up in the coming weeks. >> these warnings have been coming since 2016 and now somebody's actually sounding the alarmabili alarm about it and of course we will see how this unfolds. jenna mclaughlin and rhonda clovin. >> they get the chance to decide in the democratic primary today. caucuses begin in just a matter of hours across the state. but that said, more than 70,000 people already voted during this week's early-voting period. the latest polls. right now, on the screen, showing bernie sanders is the favorite. leading the group with 30%. pete buttigieg and joe biden are all but tied at second at 17 and 16%. elizabeth warren at 12. amy klobuchar at candidates havn working their way across the sate and the country. bloomberg of course isn't on the ballot but his campaign, certainly, making news today. he is offering to release three

women from his company's nondisclosure agreements. the women complained about inappropriate comments they said bloomberg made. saying, quote, we won't offer confidentiality agreements to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward. >> the other candidates targeted bloomberg at the debate and events across nevada this week. and one made one last appeal to voters in that state. >> come on. you all live in las vegas. this is the place you can put down the betting line. i'm just offering you this. i think there is a 50/50 chance that donald trump looks at debating me and doesn't even show up. >> whether it is racism, whether it is over religion, whether it's over the language you speak at home, whether it's over disability or orientation or gender identity, whatever it is, we've all got to stand up for each other right now because we don't know who they're going to go after next. if we do that, everyone will be safe. >> they have made it clear that they would like to continue to control the country from

washington, d.c. that's what they want. and i have been saying all along, we're going to take the power back and send it out to the people of the united states. >> we disagree on issues. that's called democracy. we disagree on issues. but we cannot disagree that the president of the united states is simply not the kind of man that we need to have in the white house. >> it's our job to stand up for our democracy. we even have a bigger job as you go out and talk to your friends and neighbors and maybe people that haven't been that involved before. or have fallen out of love of politics because of all the negativity. it's your job, really, to be the messengers for our democracy. >>ed the good news is the field narrowing. the better news, you're also taking really closer looks at the other guys now. you're all taking a real good look. they're not bad folks. they're just not democrats.

anyway. >> well, lindsey reiser is live for us in las vegas on the strip. and, lindsey, clearly based on the 70,000 people who have already voted in the early voting, there is a little bit of excitement going -- going into today's caucus day. >> yeah. really could go either way. could that be an indication of the fervor right now around caucus day and how jazzed up voters feel? or a lot of them have to work today so maybe they are deciding to stick this one out. but let's talk about one of the key significant factors that's playing out in nevada and that is diversity. let's pull some of the demographics to show you the makeup. iowa and new hampshire, you guys are used to us talking about the racial makeup there. iowa, 85% white. new hampshire, 90%. nevada, 48.7%. 20% are latino. 8% are asian here in nevada and

of course one of the candidates that's hoping to really capitalize on that diverse electorate is joe biden. a road warrior who's been following the biden campaign for us. biden not having as strong of a showing in iowa or new hampshire. tell me how his camp is feeling about their chances today. >> well, they are feeling a bit more positive. a lot of his messaging, ever since iowa and new hampshire has been let's wait and hear from these minority voters. as we come to nevada, as we move forward into south carolina, even looking into super tuesday, they are really hedging their be bets that these minority voters will turn out. and something i have noticed just in the past week covering him here, it feels different. the events look different. the energy is there. in iowa and new hampshire, a majority of them were much older and white. here, you see a diverse mix in age and also in background. so you do sense that energy. but whether it's enough, that's obviously something that the campaign is worried about.

>> well, and one other thing that's really been playing in are these debates. and how do you feel biden did on wednesday night's debate that was right here in las vegas? there were some moments where people on twitter were like where's biden? and then there were some other moments where he kind of came out swinging. you know, really saying i'm the one who can get it done. that's been his claim to fame. how do you feel he did? >> yeah. in the beginning, i think a lot of the reporters who cover him were wondering that same thing. where is he? he should insert himself because all of these -- you saw senator elizabeth warren, obviously, trying to take -- >> early. >> very early. i think it was four minutes in is what i noted down in my notes. and all these other candidates kind of jabbing gaensz eaagains other. and then he started to insert himself. whether that was powerful enough, we will see. but he obviously kept a more-measured tone and that's something that he has been trying to do. i'm the uniter. >> and marianna, quickly, biden's cam not confident in how today will go. >> no. we have heard from biden himself saying, listen, this could be

iowa 2.0. caucus chaos. so they are worried a little about that and the results and how that could affect him moving forward because he needs that momentum going into south carolina. >> we are going to be speaking to a senior of the state party. but corey and candace, for now, we'll send it back to you as we continue our live coverage here in las vegas. >> lindsey riser there on the vegas strip. just after 4:00 in the morning, our thanks to you. we are going to have continuing coverage of the nevada caucuses today, all day long. brian williams will be here. nicolle wallace. chris matthews. ari melber. joy reid will work late into the evening. it all starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern time, right here on msnbc. >> and coming up, surprising admission with the acting white house chief of staff said about immigration that's not making the president happy. >> and roger stone's last-ditch ploy to stay out of prison. we're not talking about a presidential pardon, though.

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we are reporting live from las vegas ahead of caucus day. you are looking at the live picture of the strip where, believe it or not, ice pellets are falling from the sky. i believe they call it but hopefully any meteorologist can tell me but it's melting before it hits the ground. we've talked about many of the candidates. let's talk, now, about amy klobuchar. she saw incredible momentum coming out one of the debates out of new hampshire and that really helped her in new hampshire both in delegate count and in fundraising. right now, she is in fourth place in terms of delegate count much but she's been basically really hoping to keep that momentum from new hampshire headed into the caucus day here. let's heard what she had to say

in terms of how she is matching up against mike bloomberg, one of her fellow candidates. >> i actually welcomed mayor bloomberg to the stage. i thought that he shouldn't be hiding behind his tv ads. and so i was all ready for this big day. and then i looked at the memo from his campaign staff this morning. and it said that he actually thought the three of us should get out of the way. that is what his campaign said. because we should pave the way for him to become the nominee. >> of course, that was debate night on wednesday night here in las vegas on nbc and msnbc. i want to bring in tim hogan, communications director for amy for america. let's talk about that debate performance. first of all, she was really strong in the debate. and as, do you feel like in fighting among the democratic party is normal, kind of fair game in a primary? or do you think it's hurting

rather than helping? >> well, i think she had a strong debate performance. i think that clip you just showed shows that she's not going to step aside. we had a strong debate performance in new hampshire, as well as nevada. she raised $12 million in just a short amount of time after the new hampshire debate. so we have the resources to compete not only here, nevada, and south carolina, but also in super tuesday states. >> did you see the same kind of fundraisi fundraising after the las vegas debate? >> we saw the same. and she is someone, who because our campaign on the rise took some attacks on the debate stage but has shown she is strong and i think what voters care about right now is someone who can demonstrate that they can beat donald trump. that they can build a big coalition. and amy klobuchar has proven that, time and time again. >> what's your reaction to reports that russia is meddling from afar, actually trying to help bernie sanders' campaign? >> well, i think what senator klobuchar noted yesterday is that particularly with donald

trump with russian interference, it needs to be taken seriously. he shouldn't be throwing people out of his administration and not listening to his intelligence officials. the reports are serious and they should be listened to. >> we also know that on debate night, there was a lot of back and forth between pete buttigieg and amy klobuchar. let's listen to that exchange. >> you are staking your candidacy on your washington experience. you're on the committee that oversees border security. you're on the committee that does trade. you're literally in part of the committee that's overseeing these things. and were not able to speak to, literally, the first thing about the politics of the country. >> are you trying to say that i'm dumb? or are you mocking me here, pete? i said i made an error. people sometimes forget names. i wish everyone was as perfect as you, pete. >> all right. she and pete buttigieg are kind of battling for the middle of the ground. what does senator klobuchar do

to stand out among people who are deciding between buttigieg, biden, klobuchar? >> well, what she said there is what i think is true is she has the experience not only in getting things done, passing over 100 pieces of loegislation in washington, d.c., through gridlock. making a difference in medipeop lives but she can win and she can win big. that means winning in places across the country where you can build a big coalition, have long coat tails and hopefully flip some of those senate seats so we can send mitch mcconnell packing and get something done. if you look at track record, you stack amy klobuchar's record against anyone on that stage and she comes out way ahead. >> quickly, where does she need to land today in order to make it to super tuesday? >> i think she is going to have a strong performance here. regardless, we have resources to compete. we are up on the air in many super tuesday states where our competitors are not. so we feel great about where we're going. >> tim hogan, communications

director for amy for america. thanks for joining us this morning. corey and candace, of course a lot of talk about how today is going to play out at caucus sites across the state. we are going to be hearing from senior policy advisor to the state dems about all the efforts that they're taking. of course, nobody exactly knows how today is going to land. even this senior advisor but we're going to hear some of the precautions they've taken. >> we know the democratic party is not guaranteeing results but hopefully they are working toward getting them as quickly as possible. >> which is a smart thing for them to do. just kind of say expectations will be very low. >> yes. >> all right. lindsey, thank you. and we are also following this story from "the washington post." acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, at a private event this week, told the crowd that the u.s. is, quote, desperate for legal immigrants. >> mulvaney, reportedly, saying we are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we've had in our nation over the last four years. we need more immigrants. this is according to a recording of his remarks obtained by "the

post." nbc news has not heard this recording. >> joining us now, white house reporter from the hill. morgan, good morning to you. of course, we know this administration has taken a hard line on immigration, specifically illegal immigration but also legal immigration when it comes to trying to just re-overhaul the immigration system. so the -- one of the thoughts is, does mulvaney's comments match up with what you are hearing in the white house? >> well, i think there are two important things here. first of all, this has gotten quite a bit of attention because it does seem to put mulvaney at odds with people that have more hard-line immigration views in the white house. like stephen miller, who has advocated for and indeed succeeded in pushing policies that have curbed both legal -- legal and illegal immigration. i think it's also important to remember that there are others, like jared kushner, who have advocated for, you know, revamping the immigration system in a way that attracts high-skilled workers. high-skilled immigrants.

so there are sort of diverging opinions in the white house. but obviously, you know, for trump, the prevailing effort seems to be curb both legal and illegal immigration at this point. >> and, morgan, for the most part, what does this say about the president's relationship with his acting chief of of staff? >> well, that has been something that has been the subject to -- to -- of chatter since october when mulvaney gave that infamous press conference about get over it. right. you know, i think that there have been rumors for several months that mulvaney could be on the outs. but i've been -- i have heard from sources that he's not expected to leave. and that's really just rumors at this point. of course, we know that a presidential tweet can change that at any moment. so i think there is just a lot of uncertainty about many in the administration and mulvaney is still there. and i think that's -- that's a story at this point. >> okay. so "the post" also reported that at this same event, mulvaney talked about the republican party's perceived hypocrisy when it comes to the deficit.

apparently he said, quote, my party is very interested in deficits whether there is a democrat in the white house. the worst thing in the world is deficits when barack obama was the president. and then donald trump became president and we're a lot less interested as a party. so you mentioned the fact that, you know, it's not necessarily confirmed that he's going to be going anywhere. but how does this play for mulvaney? >> well, i mean, it doesn't look good. it's -- it's -- it's another controversy for mulvaney. admitting -- admitting that and that coming out in the press. but, you know, as we've seen in this administration, there are various news stories that come out. you know, every single week. so this could be a blip by next week. >> the funny thing about what he did say. they were all just facts. >> yes. yes. >> with the deficit and when it came to this country needing more immigrants to help fuel the economy. all right. morgan chalfant, thank you. >> all right. here we go again. the new evidence the kremlin is already trying to influence the election and why they are trying to help both bernie sanders and president trump. break out the bt has something for every

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developing this morning, as the nevada caucuses are set to get underway, we are learning that russia has been trying to interfere in the democratic contest. senator bernie sanders confirming that his campaign was told by u.s. officials that russia is trying to help him win. >> this as "the new york times" reports u.s. intel officials issued a warning to house lawmakers this moscow is meddling in the 2020 election to help get president trump re-elected. nbc's hans nichols is joining us now from the white house this morning. hans, good morning to you. any reaction so far from the president overnight to this news? >> not over night to the new, candace. the president indicated yesterday that he thought this was all disinformation. this is really a test for the president and his new director of national intelligence on russia interference. he has a new odni. we will see how they respond. they're taking a different approach, though, than senator sanders, who has acknowledged

that he's received a briefing about russian potential efforts to help his campaign. and he had a message for putin. >> president donald trump, back from a west coast swing where he downplayed reports that russia is interfering in the 2020 presidential election. >> putin wants to be sure that trump wins. give me a break. >> reporter: the president dismissing intelligence from his own administration, including ousted acting director of national intelligence, joseph mcguire, after his office briefed lawmakers about russia's current meddling. >> i was told a week ago. they said, you know, they're trying to start a rumor. it's disinformation. >> but democratic front-runner bernie sanders confirming that officials have told his campaign that russia is actively trying to help him win. and responded with warning for the russian president. >> let me tell mr. putin. the american people, whether you're republicans, democrats, independents, are sick and tired

of seeing russia and other countries interfere in our election. >> before "the washington post" exclusive report came out that russia was actively working to help senator sanders and other reports that trump wants to see trump re-elected, trump suggested if putin interfered in the election, he would do so in favor of sanders. >> wouldn't he rather have bernie? who honeymooned in moscow. >> trump's comments coming as ambassador richard grenell takes over as acting director of national intelligence amid criticism about his qualifications. >> this is dangerous to our country. it'd be like sending me in for brain surgery. >> with one potential candidate for the permanent job, republican congressman doug collins opting for a senate job instead. >> this is not a job that interests me. it's not one that i would accept. >> the but president insisting that four great candidates are under consideration at dni, promising a decision within the next few weeks. >> and, guys, in the past the

president's blown past those self-imposed deadlines on making nominations, sending something formally to the senate. he does have a little urgency here though because richard grenell is serving in acting capacity and he really only has until mid-march. i think march 12th. and if the president doesn't send another name to the senate by that time, grenell has to leave so the clock is ticking. the president saying he has a lot of candidates in mind for this position but they clearly have a challenge and that is how to navigate the 2020 election and make sure that politics and/or foreign interference doesn't affect american dm democracy. guys. >> but, hans, if you name someone before that march 12th deadline, grenell could still -- >> yeah, grenell would get a another couple months. the vacancies act indicates he would get a couple months. that could be extended if the senate doesn't move quickly on whatever the nominee the president would have to formally send to the senate. so grenell could be here through, really, there is a

confirmation process and you have a new dni. but that person would be senate confirmed. and remember, the president prefers acting so it's going to be interesting to see how they untie this not. >> hans nichols in d.c. thanks, hans. >> just hours before today's nevada caucuses get underway, a live picture of the strip. it is lit up like it's 6:00 p.m. but it is 4:36 in the morning there. >> it's great. 24/7. lindsey, good morning. >> yeah. c candace, i think it always looks like this. you wouldn't know the time based on the traffic. i think this might be the city that never sleeps. but, you know, looking ahead to today, we want to talk about what safeguards are in place to make sure there is integrity in the process. make sure it's not chaotic hike it was in iowa. i spoke with john summers and he's been senior advisor to the state democratic party. he is also communications director for senator harry reid and i asked him what specific things are you doing so that the public can trust that it won't be chaotic?

the process will be protected. and he said, you know what, i think a lot of voters appreciate we can't tell you exactly everything that we're doing because, of course, that would sort of run antithetical to protecting the process. so even down to the website where they're posting the results, they weren't even releasing that because they didn't want that to be a target. and so he says, you know, people just have to trust us that we are doing what we can. really going from a high-tech option in iowa, that app, to a a low-tech option. they have a iptab with built-in calculators and managers and captains will then call phone lines. there is a call center that's managed by 200 paid employees to pick up those phone lines. so i asked john summers a little about the safeguards and even whether maybe the fact that they're transitioning from high-tech to low tech might jam up the process, might slow things down. let's take a listen. >> it's going to take a little more time. it's going to take longer than it took four years ago and there are a few reasons for that. for one, we have more candidates, right? four years ago, we had two

candidates. now, we have a handful of candidates. on top of that, we have more people. and as we talked about earlier, last cycle, we had 84,000 people who participated. again, we've already had 75,000. nearly, 75,000 participated in the caucuses. so we have more candidates. we've got more people. and the rules for reporting have changed by the dnc, which requires a little more time and -- on the back end of, you know, pulling together all that day and reporting it the way they want it reported so it's going to take a little more time. how much more time it takes is hard to know. i should also add what happened in iowa and -- and all the additional quality control that goes on top of that. and moving from a system that was high-tech to low-tech is also going to slow down the process a little bit. >> do you think it's possible that we'll go to sleep on saturday not knowing who the winner was? >> it might be possible on the east coast. but i think, you know, the party's going to do everything it can to report the -- to be able to report those results on saturday night.

>> so, candace and cory, kind of as you guys were talking, may be lower expectations a little bit. not making any promises about when we can expect to hear anything but i also talked to him about the issues important here, uniquely to nevada voters. of course, water being a huge one here in the desert. environmental issues and climate change. also, healthcare. the culinary union, the largest union here in nevada. they want to keep their healthcare. we've heard they're not big fans of medicare for all because they want to keep their strong programs that they have worked so hard to protect. and also, of course, big on everybody's minds is nominating somebody who can beat president donald trump. >> i do love that climate change is -- >> a lot of voters say the number-one important thing, a lot of democratic voters say the number-one important thing is to beat donald trump. do you think that voters in nevada share that sentiment? >> oh, absolutely. absolutely. and -- and i think any one of those candidates has the ability to do that. i think some are probably better

positioned to win than others. but when you look at the national polling, every one of those candidates is -- is in a better position to beat trump. of course, what the poll says today doesn't really mean a whole lot on election day. but the polls, generally, seem to hold and that's encouraging to us. i think the main thing for us is to make sure we keep our eye on the ball and make sure that we continue to talk about the issues that are important to, you know, people here in never h nevada and all across the country, which is obviously jobs, healthcare, major. the economy. and climate change has risen to one of the top issues that people are most concerned about. >> and a lot of people already have cast their early ballots. 75,000 people, in fact, to break down the numbers for you guys. 2016, 84,000 people, total, voted. in 2008, 118,000. so that could go either way. that could be an indication of what's to come or we may see a ton of people coming out today.

or maybe there is a lot of people who work today. maybe they don't like actual in-opinion caucusing. it's a very kind of personal event for some people. they maybe want to keep that inside. the nature of caucusing is that you are out there with your neighbors and trying to convince them to go to the other side so not everybody's a huge fan of that. but we will have to see how many people turn out today. >> the fact that they have so much early voting also could mean that there is going to be less turnout for the caucusing. >> that could be. absolutely. lindsey reiser in las vegas, thank you. >> a mystery in hawaii takes a new turn. >> a mother is arrested in the investigation into her two missing children. finally, found in hawaii. why friends say the woman was obsessed with the end of times, as her children remain missing. >> but first, roger stone with another bid to avoid prison time. this time, taking aim at the judge who just sentenced him. (whistling)

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roger stone says that the judge in his case should be disqualified. his lawyers say judge amy jackson, quote, independent dat indicates an inability to reserve judgment on an issue which has yet been heard. >> stone was convicted on seven charges, including lying to congress and witness tampering. he was ordered to to 40 months in prison. danny cevallos. danny, stone's lawyers cited a specific statement from judge

jackson when she said, quote, the jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. do you think they have a legal argument here? >> it's a long shot. but as a defense attorney, you got to try everything that may work. in this case, stone has filed a motion for a new trial. very common thing to do. the judge is still considering it. that's still open. that's why you have this new motion to disqualify the judge because of that line. now, it is true that judges must avoid, not only the actual conflict but, any appearance of conflict. however, this was a line, as the judge was sort of thanking all of the jurors and the court. and it was kind of a throwaway line to me. the jurors served with integrity. judges always compliment jurors as they are on their way out the door. you have begin up your time. you've devoted your many hours. we thank you. and so this, to me, seems like a throwaway line. but as defense counsel, you have to try everything. and the theory here is that by complimenting them for their

integrity, the judge is now disqualified from evaluating whether this new juror claim of juror misconduct is valid. >> and the juror misconduct thing, it's all about this one juror, who is a registered democrat. told them during the questionnaire, including stone's attorneys, that he had ran for office. so do they have any -- any defense here with this in. >> on the first for recusal, i don't know that they're likely to succeed. butt but like i said, you got to try. on part two, on the motion for a new trial, it is possible. new evidence arises that questions the integrity of the jury is something the court should look very seriously at. but i think, ultimately, the judge looking at this will be amy berman jackson. i don't believe the recusal motion will be successful. >> danny have sass lis, thank you. >> breaking details on the coronavirus. protests as pandemic concerns rise. >> and could it spread in the

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questions remain about two idaho children who have been missing for six months. their mother, lori vallow was arrested in hawaii and is being held on $5 million bond. she is being charged with desertion after failing to produce her children. >> vallow gave the court no clues as to where they might be. they believe the siblings are in serious danger. vallow ended up marrying a member of a religious doomsday group. he has been charged. vallow facing an extradition hearing next month. breaking news, there are now 36 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the u.s. this includes 18 people who spent nearly two weeks quarantined on the diamond princess cruise ship in japan. >> the u.s. rescued nearly 300

americans, including more than a dozen people who eventually tested positive for the virus. those infected americans flew home with uninfected passengers against the cdc's advice. here to discuss a troefcontrove decision is the director of national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, dr. anthony fauci. thank you for being here. 14 people tested for the virus. state department officials allowed them to fly anyway. was that the right kwacall? >> i believe it was. it was a very difficult decision. it was the middle of the night. the individuals were on the bus and had been on the bus for an hour or two or even more. they were exhausted. we needed to get them out of there. the thing that people don't appreciate is that on the plane that flew them back to lackland air force base and travis air force base had a segregated compartment where you could comfortably take care of these people and segregate them from

the other people on the plane so there wouldn't be that possibility of their cross contaminating or infecting people. it wasn't an easy decision but at the end of the day it was the right decision. we needed to get them out of there and to a place they can be taken care of. >> experts have referred to the diamond princess as a perfect incubator. there have been questions about if that was the right decision. >> when you say the right decision, what do you mean? >> to quarantine all those people for that many days on the ship when we started hearing more and more cases of people coming out of the ship. >> the one thing that was clear as you said correctly there were a lot of infections going on in the ship. there was a break down of infection control. we don't know how that happened or what exactly was going on but people were getting infected at a very high rate. there were more infected people on the diamond princess than any other country besides china.

so it really was kind of a hot bed of infection which was one of the reasons why we wanted to get our people out of there and back home safely. >> and they did so urgently last weekend. doctor, where would you say we are right now with this virus? are we on the brink of a pandemic? >> you know, we very well might be. our fate here in the united states and throughout the world is really going to depend on the nonchinese countries that have had travel related cases as to whether or not they could successfully prevent the sustained transmission of person-to-person-to-person-to- person. if they can't contain that, then what you're going to have is essentially mini outbreaks in multiple different countries. once you have that, it becomes very difficult to control, and then you have the makings of a pandemic, and right now, for example, it's just been very clear that that is what is going on in japan and in south korea.

we're starting to see the sustained transmissions which is very troublesome. >> what do you qualify, doctor, as a pandemic, thousands upon thousands of infections in the u.s.? >> there's multiple impeeric definitions but the bottom line is where you have sustained transmission of an infected agent diffusely spread throughout the entire world. it's not just in one place. for example, there's an epidemic in china but it isn't a pandemic for the world yet but it very well could be. >> dr. anthony fauci we appreciate your time, the director of allergy and infectious diseases. the trouble with tech. >> what's being done in nevada to prevent the chaos that happened at the iowa caucuses. that's ahead on velci. as a struggling actor, i need all the breaks that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance

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new in for us, live in las vegas this morning, we will be back tomorrow bright and early at 5:00 a.m. eastern with results. >> we look forward to it lindsey and that will do it for us. velshi is next. 36 delegates chosen in nevada today but could a so-called caucus calculator mean delayed results. 28% of latino voters supported

trump in the last election. what democrats are trying to do to stop that from happening this time. and 1795 was america's first pardon, but it's pretty clear roger stone is not who alexander hamilton had in mind when he defended the idea in the federalist papers. velshi starts now. good morning, i'm alli velshi i las vegas, the fist true test of a candidate's national appeal because it has a far more demographically diverse delegation than new hampshire or iowa. the democratic state and fasc l national apparatus are taking no chances in their effort to ensure this is not a repeat of the disaster in iowa. there are 252 caucus sites, some of which are hosting as many as two dozen precincts and that could allow for officials to monitor things more easily but

it could create confusion. early voting began a week ago, the first time the nevada democratic primary has allowed early voting and the turn out was very high, more than 75,000 people participated, the total turnout for the democratic caucus in the state. the results will be folded into today's process and will not be reported until the final tally is revealed. there is some turnovers as the part has had to invalidate a thousand ballots because the ballots lacked signatures. there are 36 delegates at stake for the democrats. as for republicans, the caucus was cancelled in what is widely viewed as an effort to help president trump's reelection be as smooth as possible. bill weld is the only remaining candidate against trump. weld got 9% of the vote in new hampshire giving him one delegate and gar -- guaranteeing

trump won't get all the delegates. senior digital editor, julio ricardo, the cohost of the emmy nominated "in the thick" podcast, and author of the think piece "democrat debate winners and losers, stereotypes won, latinos lost" and davhow beatinp bloomberg has reinviglatiorated democratic field. >> let me start with you because we have three days of analysis into the democratic debate, and i was acwatching it with twitte in one hand and the tv in front of me watching the criticism. they talked about the moderators need to be in here more. my sense was this was by far the most exciting debate that we have seen. maybe a little bit of sparring here and there but as lawrence

o'donnell and chris matthews will tell you, this is politics. that's okay to see that. we want to see people are fighters and worthy of being on the national stage debate sglg a -- debating. >> and a lot of candidates depressed about the possibility they were going to be into a bernie bloomberg end game so soon, this was a sign of life, an opportunity to show voters, i'm still kicking here. a lot of hand ringing about this is saying democrats need to be unified not to show contrast misses the story of what happened in 2016 or 2018. mean contested messy primaries often end in that party's person getting elected in the end, as long as the party can eventually unify. so the hand wringing is a little bit premature. >> the issue is how long it takes, whether it goes too late, whether you're running against trump, and it will be july before the democrats have a nominee. that's the danger. it could go to the convention. to end up in the middle of july first having your candidate could be dangerous. >> yeah, of course and the corollary to all of this is

while the people who felt signs of life for the moderates, running to be the anti-bernie sanders, bernie sanders came out of the debate feeling great because the field is still split against him. here in nevada, maybe south carolina, certainly on super tuesday, he's going to continue to be able to build a delegate lead and make the case that maybe the convention shouldn't be contested because it looks more and more likely he's going to have a plurality of delegates. >> julio, let's talk about latino vote. it is not a monolith, everybody tells us this. if we look back to the 2016 and 2012 elections, more than a quarter of the latino population voted for a republican candidate. there's a very strong republican base amongst latinos, so democrats need to try and make end roads there and make sense for latinos, and you said that stereotypes won and latinos lost in the debate. tell me why? >> because, you know, there was the first big substantiative discussion was about naming the president of mexico, like that

turned into all of a sudden latin america gets mentioned. >> let me be clear, that's not a thing. it would nice if you could name the president of mexico, and prime minister of canada. >> and i heard the word latin america. oh, here we go. venezuela, puerto rico, maybe mexico. and it was like let's move on, and also just what i mentioned even when here in this state where actually immigration is an issue. >> with voters. >> considering there's a lot of daca recipients, there's a lot of dreamers here, a lot of mixed status families, and the immigration question was buttigieg and klobuchar kind of sniping at each other, and everyone was sitting back going not me. >> and then there are the greater issues, the fact that people -- latinos in this country, it's not all about latin american policy. >> it's not. some of them it's the same issues like all of us face, wages, the economy, basic issues. >> right. and one of the big things about

the population that people need to know, it's more english dominant, more and more assimilated. i'm not surprised about the 25% that trump gets because there's a lot of people when you mention, you know, immigration reform or anything, that's not me. right, and that's the part where i do think trump, all trump needs to do is neutralize the vote and scream socialize, he'll probably win florida. he has plenty of support here. one of the things, latinos for trump, the campaign is a mega church here in vegas, and there's a lot of people, evangelicals, there's, you know, faith-based latinos who are like trump is our guy, and immigration doesn't matter to me. democrats need to do a better job waking up to the fact that actually more latinos lean democratic, you're talking about 65%, and give us a little bit more here, people. >> gabe, what do you think has to happen today? a couple of things i think has to happen, we have to get results and it has to run

relatively smoothly. like iowa and new hampshire, it's small. the numbers in the grand total, you need 1991 to win on the first ballot. going to get a handful, split between the delegates. what does success look like for a candidate coming out of nevada. >> it depends on the candidate, the point you made earlier, what we are talking about is the whole story of nevada. this is the first state that looks a little bit more demographically like the rest of the country. it's about sending a signal. if you're joe biden and having terrible results in the first two states, you're able to have a little bit of a comeback, it's a signal to the country and especially the other candidates, the candidates standing at this race tonight and whenever the results come out are the ones who disappoint or have an ability to be intro speculative and say if i didn't do well in nevada, it probably means i'm not going to do well in california, texas, other big diverse states that represent the country. every one of the people will be evaluating what is the path to getting a certain number of

delegates and also how am i going to have enough money to stay in the race. if they don't overperform, they're going to have to have that conversation with themselves in the next week. >> are either of you expecting, what's your most unusual expectation about today, you know, who's going to surprise and who's going to disappoint? >> that's a great question. if bernie sanders doesn't win it will be the biggest political upset of the election cycle in democratic, you know, modern political history. i don't expect sanders to lose. tom steyer. there's a lot of local people, if you look, he spent a lot. there's a lot of local activists. i talked to people. the state director. he seems to residenonate. he's kind of like the nice billionaire, as opposed to bloomberg. and biden, you know, who knows. i mean, i don't know second place cuts it for biden. remember, sanders came in second place in 2016 and after that, clinton ran away with the primary and never caught up. biden has to win, i think. >> what do you think, gabe?

>> i was going to say tom steyer as well because he has been advertising so heavily here, and he's a lot stronger in south carolina than people realize. but the other part i'm looking at here is elizabeth warren, obviously had a very strong debate, a lot of people are giving her another look. as was discussed so much of the early vote was banked by that point. it's very difficult to see whatever bump she gets. >> we'll watch closely. thank you to both of you, npr's senior digital editor, julio ricardo. congressman ro khanna, a cochair of the bernie sanders campaign. the campaign also picked up the endorsement of dick van dyke but the bigger news is sanders has been confirmed that he has been briefed by u.s. intelligence officials about russia's attempts to help his campaign. congressman, good to see you. thank you for being with us. politics aside, this is a major

issue, the idea that there seem to be some russian strategy involved in having bernie sanders be the candidate to run against donald trump when we know that there's been russian influence in favor of donald trump. what did oes that tell you? >> it's very concerning. some of us have been sounding the alarm for years that our nation is still vulnerable to russian interference. here's what we need to do. first, we need to pass election security legislation. there's legislation to make sure that foreign agents can't advertise on social media, that we have paper ballots. mitch mcconnell has held it up. now we need to pass that. second, i believe that intelligence officials need to come to the house of representatives and have hearings and brief the american public on what the threat is without getting into classified information so that people are aware of the disinformation that we may face. >> what do you make of the fact that the seems unalarmed by the fact that the director of

national intelligence had a briefing with members of congress that suggested russia is back in the game, they never stopped being in the game after the 2016 election, and the president's response to that wasn't let's get a task force together, let's solve this problem, it's democrats are going to use this against me in the election. >> well, the president has been deflecting attention from a serious threat since he was elected and the problem is this is not something that affects republicans or democrats. it affects our democracy. we in the house passed hr 1 that actually tackles this election interference. it has been sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk and he hasn't moved it, and i think people are right to be extraordinarily angry and frustrated and should demand that congress actually protect our elections. >> congressman, what do you make of the idea that there's a strategy, if there's a russian strategy to help donald trump get elected and russians want bernie sanders to get the nomination, that they believe

that bernie sanders would be their best bet against donald trump because donald trump would win. what do you make of that political argument? >> i don't think vladimir putin is smart enough to have that complex strategy. i think what they are doing is try to sow discord in american democracy. misinformation, try to cause doubt in our e lelectoral process. there is a fix for this. we can have paper ballots. we can have election security. we can have better laws and coordination with social media companies to prevent foreign actors from having disinformation campaigns to prevent them from advertising. the problem is that congress isn't acting. the republicans aren't acting and that's what we ought to be talking about. how do we prevent this. that's what bob mueller warned us about. >> congressman, can bernie sanders do more about the stuff that is going on in social media and his campaign? you're a cochair, you're not one of those people who sort of tweets nasty stuff, but there

has been some stuff he was confronted about this in the debate, he said it's volunteers, it's people he doesn't want. if people are hostile on social media, he wants to disavow himself, but it's actually some people who are in the campaign, many of whom are paid. >> let me be very clear. i have great respect for the other democratic contenders and bernie sanders and we unequivocally denounce any comments online that are harassing, that are bullying that are making people feel uncomfortable. that doesn't represent the best of democracy. that doesn't represent bernie sanders, and we don't want it. we condemn it unequivocally. >> congressman let me talk about one of the issues that's going to be really big here, is health care. bernie sanders has a remarkable and comprehensive plan for universal health care, something that i have often talked about with wonder that the united states is the only, the biggest and the standout major economy

that doesn't have some form of universality in health care. that has helped label him as afta socialist. what's the way out of that. what's the way around that to tell people, even here, union members, that they may really like their hard fought health care but universal health care is a better idea? >> ali, it comes down to a fundamental belief. is health care a basic right. we have believed that a democratic party that it is for 75 years, going back to fdr and harry tr harry truman. they were the first to push for a single payer health system, people don't have deductibles, copays, high premiums. jimmy carter ran and won on single payer health care. ted kennedy, we have had candidates like harris woford win pennsylvania on single payer health care. bernie sanders is talking about doing something that has been the aspiration of our party for

75 years. let me be clear with the unions. the plan is a four-year transition. so most of the union plans will be grandfathered in because union contracts last for only three years. a, they will have health care and then they can bargain for better wages and better working conditions. >> congressman, good to see you, thank you for joining us. democratic congressman and bernie sanders campaign cochair representative ro khanna coming from oakland. thank you, sir. >> stay with msnbc for coverage of the nevada caucus, and starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern, join brian williams, joy wallace, joy reid and our panel of political experts as nevada voters weigh in on the race for the white house. >> it's predawn in las vegas and i'm going to be with you again after dark because a whole lot of people think counting today's votes could become a fiasco like iowa. nevada democrats hope that's not going to happen.

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they tried to divide us up. that's what they did in 2016, and that is the ugliest thing they're doing is they are trying to cause chaos and trying to cause hatred in america. it's an ugly business and all of us have got to say sorry, you're not going to do this in this

election. and again, as president of the united states, mr. putin, you will not interfere in our elections. >> democratic front runner bernie sanders is warning putin not to meddle in our elections after multiple reports suggest that russia's strategy to help reelect president trump is by interfering in the democratic primaries and boosting the sanders campaign. now, we don't know yet if the russians have any new tactics. after 2016, it's clear that online disinformation campaigns are at the center of their efforts to undermine our democracy. trump who has accused democrats of working to rig the election against sanders is once again down playing russia's influence. >> i was told a week ago, they said, you know, they're trying to start a rumor, it's disinformation. that's the only thing they're good at. they're not good at anything else. they get nothing done. do nothing democrats. that putin wants to make sure i

get elected. listen to this, so doesn't he want to see who the democrat's going to be. wouldn't he rather have, let's say, wouldn't he rather have bernie. >> joining me now is nbc's ben collins an early facebook investor, and author of the zucked now out in paperback. ben, let's start with you. do we know what russian tactics we're talking about here? there's a political angle to this. it seems the russians would like to see bernie sanders be the candidate against donald trump because that helps the goal in their opinion of getting donald trump elected. do we know what they're doing, what the fbi told sanders they're actually up to. >> we don't know but we can intuit based on the information we know from 2016 and bot researchers right now. josh russell who is an independent researcher in indiana who covers this stuff, bots are not the think this time. they're not driving automated accounts to these people. what we can probably assume just

like 2016, they have troll accounts posing as americans trying to stir up divides, trying to bring each party to the most extreme position and riling up bases to get angry at people within the party and outside of the party. that's what happened in 2016. they made some bernie sanders accounts in the primary because they did not want hillary clinton to be the nominee. now, that, you know, those accounts evolved over time to be trump supporting. that was the larger scale operation that they were trying to pull off, but you know, that's what we can intuit based on this so far. we don't have hard evidence yet, because the intelligence community has not let it out. we're going to seek it out. that's what the next few weeks will be. we don't know exactly what they're looking at. >> roger, as we follow this, as we should follow this, you want to point out that there are two things we should be looking at, whether there's outside influence on the internet, disinformation campaigns that are meant to be supportive of bernie sanders, so that he gets

nomination, meant to be supportive of donald trump winning the election but you warned that in both of those campaigns there's a whole separate thing going on, stuff from inside the campaign that is also designed to do similar things. >> ali, i think what happened in 2016 is the russians seeded disinformation campaigns on behalf of trump and sanders that became organic. think about this, how much resentment remains on both sides, and i think that's really what has fueled the supporters and on the sanders side you still hear people complaining about 2016 just as you do in trump events. what the russians seeded has become an organic process in the case of sanders, george washington university has reported a network of 2,800 facebook pages. 1843 facebook groups, amplified them and those are run by americans who are true believers in bernie sanders who may have at one time been motivated by russian input but which now

operate totally independently. to me the really big things, i think americans have to step back and go wait a minute, are we going to determine who our elected officials are or not because i am personally disappointed in senator sanders for two things. one is not bringing up the fact that he's known about this for a month. in my mind, what did he think was going to happen. this is the kind of stuff that needs to be disclosed instantly, and same with president trump. the second issue is he should be looking at these networks and going, you know, he needs to bring the party together. sanders can do much better by getting rid of all of the hate speech and all of the other kinds of bernie bro behaviors going on in those networks. that is not helping him. it's not helping the party. but it's for sure helping putin. >> and i got to point out, i get bernie active on twitter and get involved in discussions with supporters of all the candidates and there are some great conversations to be had. >> absolutely. >> with bernie sanders

supporters as there are with supporters of all the other candidates but sometimes it can get a little rough and rugly. that's also okay but sometimes there's dishonesty spread. you have been reporting on the fact that twitter is making a move starting the beginning of march to identify those things that are actually dishonest coming from campaigns or skp misleading coming -- or misleading coming from campaigns and you'll see it on your twitter feed. >> march 5th. twitter is going to identify things that are false, manipulative media from politicians, things that go viral, and otherwise would go unchecked. right now, you know, things skew towards fear and resentment and all of the things that help out foreign disinformation campaigns. that's what the point of it is to divide parties and make it so there is some incentive for candidates to get ugly, right. when it's sort of marked by a scarlet letter or something like that on twitter, it's not going

to help to be, like, objectively wrong about stuff. you know, i think generally, too, there is a difference between what bernie is doing and what trump is doing here. you know, trump said, you know, like russia, please go hack hillary clinton's e-mails, right. that is a wholly different thing than we heard from senator sanders. those are two different things. platforms can crack down on this. i'm telling you, twitter is trying. facebook is not. just not trying. and i think that we -- i think people have to start to understand, like, there's going to be two different sets of rules for two different social networks, one is much smaller. facebook, a lot of this is going to happen in the dark and pretty much unchecked. >> i think your point there is very valid. bernie sanders is out there saying he doesn't want this stuff. donald trump actually re-tweets misinformation and things he knows to be disinformation. however, roger you're a little concerned about some of the ways in which twitter is going to go

about identifying misleading information. >> to me the core issue and ben has gotten to the heart of it, they are going to start by attacking things but they have proposed the possibility of leaning into the community to determine which things are misinformation and which are not, which is a system we learned in 2016 is really easily gamed. this is the core thing we have to get down to. ben made this point a moment ago. facebook is not only not helping right here. they have changed their strategy relative to, you know, false alalds and things like that. it's that huge problem and people should be up in arms. we should be screaming about it. >> you have been doing that. you have done it in a book. ronler mcnamee, author of "zucked." >> ben collins thank you for joining me so early this morning. how one of nevada's largest labor union could halt the momentum bernie has been building.

the fight between the senator and the powerful culinary union over the sanders health care plan. cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ when the murray's head to work... ...their dog michelangelo gets to work, too. today's job? own. the. bed. stink-eee. good thing they use new gain ultraflings

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vo:for president.ver that's mike bloomberg. a middle class kid who built a global company from scratch. mayor of new york, rebuilding the city after the 9-11 terrorist attack, creating 450,000 jobs. running for president

- and on a roll. workable plans to deliver on better health care. affordable college. job creation. common sense plans to beat trump, fix the chaos in washington, and get things done. mike: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

i wouldn't even be up on this stage if it wasn't for unions and the dignity of work. >> trump thinks that wall street and the super rich built this country. they didn't build this country. the middle class built this country. >> unions built america's middle class give them a chance and unions will rebuild america's middle class. >> here in las vegas, democrats have set their sights on working class americans begging the question, how much value do unions provide, not just to candidates but to their membership. in 1911, 146 workers, 129 of them women, were killed in a factory fire that burned through several floors of the triangle shirt waste company in new york city. most deaths could have been

prevents leading to the movement to fight for better working conditions. president roosevelt signed the fair labor standards act which gave workers the ability to negotiate collectively for better working conditions, fair pay for 40-hour work weeks and extra pay for working overtime. unions took a big hit in 1947 after republicans in congress passed the taft-hartley act that allowed businesses to ban strikes and boycotts, and permitting unions to donate to political campaigns. union organization grew, hitting its peak in 1954. 35% of americans were unionized. that drop has been precipitous. latest numbers show a 25% decrease, now standing at 10.3%. that's the lowest on record since 1983. so why the decline in membership? well, in 1981, president ronald reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike for a pay increase and

lesser hours. that was seen as the death nail for the leverage of strikes and walkouts but there have been some victories for the labor movement since. in 2018, teachers struck across the country in places like west virginia, oklahoma, kentucky, arizona, colorado, and north carolina gave educators big wins with pay increases, concessions or increased budget plans, but even with those recent union victories, the urgency for workers to join a union doesn't exist the way it used to, and according to the "wall street journal," union memberships hit a record low losing 170,000 members in 2019. "the new york times" argues that labor laws are broken because president trump's administration is quote hamstringing union activism. so how do unions unify? when we come back, we'll talk to the president of one labor union, velshi continues in a moment. e. oh, i... i didn't know. you didn't see the sign? that... that wasn't there when i was here earlier. (whimper) really?

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let me be very clear for my good friends in the culinary workers union, a great union. i will never sign a bill that will reduce the health care benefits they have. we will only expand it for them, for every union in america, and for the working class of this country. >> welcome back. we're talking about nevada's union workers. joining me now is detailer, the international president of unite here. that is the national arm of the union that is the culinary union here in las vegas. so he knows a lot about this.

i want to continue this conversation about one of the biggest things, unions in this country have fought for wages and proper working hours, safe working conditions and health care. health care has probably been one of the biggest bites, every union leader tells me that every negotiation really centers around in large part health care. >> it's always a point of contention because it's money. whether it's pension, health care, wages, working conditions. >> so bernie sanders says he wants a plan that, he was speaking to the culinary workers, that is better than what they have. and ultimately, coming from a place with single payer health care like every other developed country in the world, it is always ultimately better, right, everybody who's not covered gets covered and everybody has ultimate choice, you can go to any doctor at any hospital. what's the push back from your membership? >> well, our union is a broad union. some people are very much, great, that's wonderful. because we have workers who don't have good health insurance

or have no insurance at all. that's why we had a fight with airline catering. then we have people in las vegas. where they have a very good health care plan. the folks here, the locals here say listen, we just want to have a choice. we just want to have a choice. if it's as good as advertised, great, but if it's not we want to have the option to keep our plan. >> medicare for all as proposed by bernie sanders gives everybody equal choice. under his plan, we'd have to discuss how it's executed but under a single payer health care system like i come from in canada, one can go to any doctor at any hospital anywhere in the country. >> well, i think the folks here have said, how is that going to happen, we've heard all kinds of promises in the past, you know, sort of where is the meat behind that. at the same time, if it's as good as he advertises or whomever advertises, that's a no brainer. our folks feel like, you know, a housekeeper or a cook, a cocktail waitress, they're smart people. let them make their own choices,

you know, the woman who runs our local here said i always thought democrats were pro-choice, not anti-choice, they just want to have that option. >> do you think you might have been fooled by the advertising that suggests or maybe it's bernie sanders not doing a good enough job or elizabeth warren not doing a good enough of job of saying single payer health care and universal health care in every other country in the world is about choice. >> absolutely. no one ever talks about choice. i actually think that health care should be a right. i think it's outrageous in this country. it's not a question of that. i'm glad this question on health care debate which has been raised here got lifted up. at the same time, i think that people who have been on strike here, for example, six years or nine months or have fought like hell for their benefits, they're not just going to say, go ahead, politician, you can just take it. >> right. is there some of that there, that ownership that i have been in leadership, i have been in a union for so long and i own this health care. it's like somebody said to me,

velshi, we're going to change all the graphics on all the shows to one thing because it's more effective and i'm saying, what are you talking about, we worked really hard to have our look and our feel and our name on our show. >> well, people have to pay for their prescription drugs tomorrow or go to the doctor tomorrow, they don't think about two years from now, and i think what's happened, not just with our union, people in general who have insurance, i know what i have. now, some people don't have it or it's crappy, and thank god we have this conversation about having health care for all. but people have good health insurance are like, hold on one second. i want to keep mine. if you've got a product that's better later, great. we'll consider it. >> more detail needed. a little more detail about what's going on over here. do you often have rain? >> well, about once a month. >> okay. we got the lucky day then. good to see you. >> thank you so much. >> thank you for being with me. coming up. the power of the presidential

pardon. president trump issued seven pardons this past week to high profile felons and there's a chance that long time trump ally roger stone could get pardoned next. we'll take a look at the trumpian process by which pardons are handed out when velshi returns in las vegas. pra. it cleans grease five times faster. new dawn powerwash. spray, wipe, rinse. -excuse me. uh... do you mind...being a mo-tour? -what could be better than being a mo-tour? the real question is... do you mind not being a mo-tour? -i do. for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. -i do. ♪ do you recall, not long ago ♪ we would walk on the sidewalk ♪

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overnight, former illinois democratic governor rod blagojevich who had his 14 year federal prison sentence commuted by president trump earlier this week offered a unique view of his conviction on multiple charges to cnn's anderson cooper. >> i am a political prisoner. i was put in prison for practicing -- >> you're a political prisoner? nelson mandela was a political prisoner. political prisoners have no due process and are unjustly squaja. you had a jury convict you. >> what i'm saying is i was thrown in prison and spent eight years in prison for practicing politics. >> that's not exactly how it went, but anyway, in all, donald

trump granted clemency to four people and pardons to seven others this week. other high profile felons receiving pardons, bernie carrick and eddie debartolo, the former owner of the sfan francisco 49ers. all eleven recipients had an inside connection or were promoted on fox news. this morning we thought we'd take a look at the history of the pardon. it can be traced back to about 1754 bc and the code of hamarabi, the 6th backboking. he gave the rule ore king the ability to forgive crimes of citizens when warranted. in ancient greece, 403 bc, the power of the pardon rested with the people. to receive amnesty, the individual had to collect 6,000 signatures from fellow citizens. let's move to medieval times

now, 1,400 ad, the power of the pardon was divided between the church and rulers, kings offered pardons as a vehicle to raise cash or enlist military service, and in american history, alexander hamilton introduced p pardon in the federalist papers writing "without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguineary and cruel. washington issued pardons to members of the whiskey rebellion in 1759. lincoln issued dozens of pards to confederate soldiers for civil war related offenses and the infamous or famous pardon in american history blonlelonged t president gerald ford, september 8th, 1974, he pardoned richard nixon after his resignation because of the watergate scandal saying nixon had suffered

enough. joining us john allen, national political reporter for nbc news and coauthor of "shattered: inside clinton clinton's doomed campaign" and carol lam. thank you for being here. john, let's talk about what this may be, the idea that donald trump is revving up the pardons generally speaking in some cases issuing them to people who will only generate interest and controversy for a few days. michael mikken has been acting like a guy without conviction for years. will this soften up the party or raise some feathers? >> kanye west and kim kardashian west ask for a pardon for somebody he'll use in a political campaign, who may generate more public sympathy for their case, and then you see pardons like michael milken and

he's philanthropic. at the same time he made people wealthy like the guy nelson pelts who held a huge fund-raiser for donald trump the weekend before the pardon was issued, so big couples had to pay over half a million dollars to go, it raised $10 million for the president's re-election campaign. i don't know if you could have a bigger advertisement for if you'd like your friend that made you rich to get a pardon, please donate money to me. >> right. and carol, when you look at the interview with rod blagojevich or when he came out of prison and gave a comment, this political prisoner thing. let's be clear. you might not think that he deserved the sentence he got but it wasn't, he wasn't railroaded. >> no, he wasn't railroaded. he went through a jury trial and convicted by a jury. the judge sentenced him and he lost his appeal. there are a lot of aspects to what's going on that's troubling and let's be clear.

the president has unfettered authority to grant pardons but remember that the one power a president doesn't have is the power to put somebody in jail, but this is the flipside of the coin. the president can let people out of jail or he can commute their sentences, and so in a case like rod blagojevich, you have a situation where the president is just saying basically i think this guy got too much time and is he entitled to do that, but generally speaking, those types of decisions are reserved for people who acknowledge their crimes. >> right. >> and have basically accepted that they did something wrong. >> saying you're a political prisoner or dinesh desouza continues to say he was railroaded that's not going with presidential pards, ons. he pardoned some people who might get public support or right would like to see pardoned like sheriff arpaio and most

people are wondering how does this affect roger stone, paul manafort and mike flynn? >> he'll get advice telling him wait until after the election. if you lose you're a lame duck, you can do whatever you want, if you win you got another term, could you do whatever you want. it will be interesting to see whether he pardons ma in a fort, stone and flynn before the next election. even blagojevich the crimes that blagojevich was most famous for or sort of the substance of that case was around trying to sell a senate seat. >> right. >> so the president sees some mirror image in the exercise of politics and you got blagojevich coming out and like i'm a political prisoner as though he was fighting to end apartheid in south africa, a russian dissident flung out to siberia. >> he had the power to appoint someone to barack obama's vacated seat. >> exactly and he wanted to get

paid for that or wanted to get a position in government from that and look, these things have happened -- the president's right, that there is often a horse trade that goes along with something like a senate seat. the problem is there are too two-problems, one looking for cash or some sort of financial reimbursement for yourself, a personal gain from it rather than a political trade, i'll appoint this person to the senate and i get appointed to this other thing or somebody else that i like gets appointed, that's something different and the other piece that's different about it isxplicitness of it. it's not the only thing that matters. you heard the president say about his russia phone call there's no quid pro quo. carol is a prosecutor, she can tell you there are so many other things that show what that call was about that you don't need that quid pro quo there. >> right. >> blagojevich actually said those things so it was so much clearer. >> carol, how do prosecutors think about those things? you know there are pardons.

every president does them. there have been thousands per presidency. how do you think about it? does it undermine the work of prosecutors? is there an amount of time that makes it okay that all right, that's what presidents can do? what does pardoning these people do to the legal system? >> of course for a prosecutor, who spent a lot of time on a prosecution, it can be a little demoralizing when there's a pardon, but prosecutors accept that's the president's power. where it can really undermine a prosecuto prosecutor's work is in a situation where you feel that it's being useds as currency with someone you're currently prosecuting as in the palm ma in a fort and roger stone situations where there's this feeling there's something that the president who is personally involved in w these scenarios that these men are being prosecuted for, where the president might be dangling the possibility of a pardon out there. >> these pardons may be backdrop for what's going on with somebody like roger stone. >> and might be an incentive for them not to cooperate with the

prosecution and not enter into a plea bargain. that's the danger >> thank you so both of you for being with me on this early morning on the west coast. thank you, carol, who came in from l.a. and john as always, thanks. i think i'll be seeing you more today. >> yes, absolutely. coming up live from las vegas, missing from this week's debate stage but by no means out of the running in nevada where he's polling in the double digitses. how tom steyer intends to drive his message home as caucus goers prepare to make their presidential picks. in america we all count. no matter where we call home, how we worship, or who we love. and the 2020 census is how that great promise is kept. because this is the count that informs where hundreds of billions in funding

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good morning. i'm ali velshi live in las vegas where the democrats start caucuses in just six hours. nevada is seen as the first true test of each candidate's national appeal because this state is more demographically diverse than new hampshire or iowa. there are 36 pledged delegates at stake today for the democrats, still a tiny percentage of the 1991 delegates that a candidate needs to clinch the nomination on the first ballot. the candidates have spent a significant amount of money here in an effort to win as many delegates as possible and the latest campaign finance report showed how much money is already involved in the democratic race, with three candidates surpassing $100 million spent. joining me is one of the big spenders 2020 presidential candidate tom steyer. among the democrats he's currently second in total

fund-raising, second in total spending, and second in cash on hand, but as of now, zero delegates in the bag. tom, you are hoping that this is where the game changes for you in a meaningful way. >> ali, this is a new race. as you said, now we're starting to get into the states that reflect the diversity of the united states and the diversity of the democratic party. so i think for anyone who wants to actually pull his party together across all the different ways, we're a big tent thank goodness, we're a very diverse party, this is the first chance for people to show they can pull this party together and put together the kind of coalition, including black people and latinos and native americans and asian-americans as well as white people that we need to win in november. >> so i've talked about this for a long time. i want our viewers to understand why looking at you really rich white guy, you're the guy who is going to be more reflective of the face of america as they vote

in nevada and south carolina. what's the argument? what about you makes you the coalition builder? >> look, the funny thing about this whole thing, and believe me, i know i'm white, but in fact, if you look at my ability to get voters in the african-american community, in the latino community, asian-american community, native american community as well as white people actually i talk directly to those issues. i'm the person in this race, the only one i believe who will say that he or she is for reparations for slavery, i'm someone who worked on immigration on a personal basis welcoming people to the united states for 35 years. i have a history, we start, my wife and i started a nonprofit bank 15 years ago specifically to support businesses owned by black people, latinos and women, because the financial services industry is so prejudiced and discriminatory. so actually i have a decade's long history of working with those groups in those

communities with and for them for a long time and it's resonating. >> just before the show i asked you, there's two views of debate on wednesday night. some said it was a circular firing squad and others it was energizing. thank you michael bloomberg for getting everybody's blood pressure up. >> the person who won that debate was donald trump. what people have forgotten is what we need to do is show the american people that we have something much better than mr. trump. he's running on the economy. he's a liar and a fake. in fact, his economy i call it the mar-a-lago economy. it's growing but all the money is going to rich people. there are jobs, but you can't live on the jobs that this economy produces and when he talks about how the stock market is doing well, most people don't own stocks. i'm talking about a 10% tax cut for everybody who makes less than 250,000 bucks. i'm talking about creating literally millions and millions of good paying union jobs

because we have to rebuild this country in a climate smart way and $7.25 minimum wage, ali, do the math. >> yes. >> you can't live on that. i've been fighting for $15 an hour since 2012 when i was picketing mcdonald's, and actually i think it should be 22 bucks that, would be a fair minimum wage. we're talking about a completely different split of the money in this economy under what i'm talking about. mr. trump keeps saying, and i go on fox news and i get in a fight with the anchor every single time. you're kidding me, you don't think the economy is good? not for working people. >> quinn nipiac came out with a survey, number one issue is economy, health care second, climate is a distant third. amongst democrats it's climate and health care. for people who think the economy is the biggest issue in the swing states are believing donald trump's rhetoric about a great economy.

if you come down from mars and look at the economy, gdp and stock price and property values are good, interest rates are low. what is the disconnect? >> what you're talking about is an average. you know the old saying on average, i feel pretty good. my feet are in the oven, my head is in the ice box. if you look at the numbers the money is going 100% to rich people and has for 40 years. trump gave the biggest tax cut in history to really rich people and big corporations and he's now saying he blew up the deficit, swore he'd balance the budget, we have a trillion dollar deficit and saying after the election i'm going after medicare, medicaid and social security. this guy is terrible for working people in the united states. just terrible. and no one will stand up to him. i'm the only guy or woman in this race who is saying i want trump on this stage and i'll destroy him on the economy because he's a liar. >> you didn't see folks wednesday night going up against

trump? >> look, i -- >> i understand you want to be that guy. >> i'm not saying i want to, i'm saying i'm the person who can do the two things that the democratic candidates can't, one, take him on, on the economy, i started a business from scratch, i know a heck of a lot more economics than donald trump. i can go way farther than he can and he's lying. this economy isn't working for working people and yes, of course people, he keep saying it and no one contradicts him. secondly you got to pull this party together. what i saw on wednesday night is the question about does the democratic party go like that, the old saying we must all hang together or surely we will all hang separately, this party has got to come together across racial and ethnic lines but also pull together the people across the spectrum. i'm a progressive. we need someone who can do that and take a look and think about who can pull this party together and who can take on trump on the stage on the economy, and i can do both of them. >> tom, thank you for being with

us. we hope to talk to you later on today after we start to get some results, if we do. i know you're staking a lot on nevada and south carolina. so we'll continue this conversation as always. thank you. >> ali velshi, nice to see you. 2020 presidential candidate tom steyer. stay with msnbc throughout the day. we have special coverage of the nevada caucus at 2:00 p.m. eastern time. brian williams, nicole wallace, chris matthews, ari melber, joy reid and political panel of experts nevada voters weighing in for the race for the white house. i'm going to be watching, i'm going to be sleeping for a little bit of it so i can get a little rest because i'll be back with you at 11:00 p.m. eastern tonight. we are sort of hoping that by that time, 11:00 eastern, we are going to have some results. there are some rumblings that we may not, depending who you ask. some people say i don't know if it's going to happen. they were going to use the app they used in iowa. they are not using that but they are using a calculator and

they've hired an entire call center so that results can come in. meanwhile, democrats are desperate not to repeat the disaster that was the iowa caucus. in addition to the dnc taking a much more hands-on approach, the nevada state democrats have hired as i mentioned a professional call center with 200 paid operators and dedicated reporting lines to help take in the results. they've also scrapped similar plans to use that app that was used in iowa. there are 2,099 precincts in nevada but only 252 caucus sites, meaning some are hosting as many as two dozen precincts at one caucus site. that should allow for officials to monitor things more easily. could create some confusion. joining me here on set, on the las vegas strip the editor of the "nevada current" hugh jackson. will nevada get a victory speech, and executive director

of planned action, laura martin member of the national coalition of 100 black women, las vegas. >> thank you for having us. >> what are you anticipating happens today? >> we'll see now that it's raining but what we're excited about at plan action we've trained a lot of people to know how to caucus and be excited about it. a lot of our leaders will be site leaders and precinct captain, a lot of formerly incarcerated people. we passed a law during this nevada caucus there will be 80,000 more people eligible to vote and so we're excited for a lot of people who are going to be caucusing for the first time and we saw through early voting what the democratic party announced more than half of the early voters had caucused for the first time ever. >> 74,000 people in early voting, that last caucus in 2016 there were 80,000 people in total. >> yes. >> 2008, i believe it was a big turnout here, record turnout, 120,000 people. are you clear on what's happening today? most people who are going to

caucus caucused and see smaller turnout today and still turns out to be good numbers or do you think we're seeing bigger numbers today? >> i don't know. i live in vegas but not a gambler or good guesser. i hope so. the progressive leadership alliance in nevada who i work for we want to deepen democracy. we want everybody to participate. >> feels like democracy. people remind me there's nothing wrong with coming here, negotiating with people like you do in a caucus. it's unusual, maybe antiquated but interesting way of doing politics. >> like we said when we train our leaders we say you're voting with your body. you're meeting with your neighbors, maybe people you met for the first time but negotiating voting with your buddy and literally standing with who you support. >> kind of neat. hugh? >> yes. >> i'm going to be back here at 11:00 p.m. eastern, 8:00 p.m. pacific time. do you think i'll have something to say about who won this caucus

in. >> i hope so. the democrats say they're going to muscle out some results today. they're insisting they're going to do that and we'll see what time of day it is. hopefully -- look, caucuses, i couldn't disagree with you more with respect to how quaint and charming caucuses are. they're incredibly anti-democratic. there are so many barriers. >> they're time specific. >> time specific and people can't get off their jobs and this type of stuff but also you know, they are run by the state party and i think this is something that maybe a lot of people around the country don't realize. these are not run by the government. nevada -- >> new hampshire it's run by the government. >> and nevada is actually quite good at running elections, government officials are. >> right. >> we've got this ferrari in the garage meanwhile we have this clunking system that's going on and going to come up with like you say, i hope some results today. >> laura, you mentioned something about formerly incarcerated workers and also

got dreamers involved in the political process. >> one in five people in nevada are foreign born. we have a big number who benefit from the daca program or sometimes people call them dreamers. a caucus is undemocratic but it is volunteer-led so there will be a lot of dreamers all over nevada, providing translation in spanish, whatever people need so i think that's why the quaintness that i see in it is that everybody has a chance to participate. it is not democratic. you can't participate if you don't have child care, you work somewhere that doesn't have predictive scheduling, if you don't have transportation there and back but it is getting better, and bigger. the early vote helped with the turnout numbers. >> hugh, that's one big benefit, days and days of early voting. seems to have worked. >> very much to the nevada democratic party's credit they decided to do this, the first time i'm aware of anybody tried

voting early in a caucus. >> one thing if 5,000 people showed up and then 74,000. >> the other foot on that, are they going to have the early votes counted and be able to assign them where they need to be assigned today? that's going to be interesting to watch. but you know, laura was talking about the different types of economic problems. some of them are economic problems that prohibit people from voting, and one thing that i do want to say is, there is a lot of national attention about nevada is the first diverse state and that's absolutely true. but there are a lot of reasons why nevada should be an early state, and one of them has to do with diversity, that is the structure of this economy. you had tom steyer talking about gdp growing. in nevada, the state gdp has grown. median household income in nevada is actually lower now than it was before the -- >> that's the story. gdp grows and stock markets grow and donald trump brags about

that, median income and i'm going to show a chart of this, i don't know if my control room has it now, median income for decades remains the same. >> and the wage growth in nevada has been among the third lowest by some accounts in the country. >> right. >> so when you talk about nevada being reflective of the country, you have so many people that it precarious jobs, part-time work, without solid scheduling, without solid wages and reliable benefits or maybe no benefits at all. the culinary has gotten a lot of attention from the media, and make no mistake, the consumer core in this town would be much less powerful if not for the culinary and wages and benefits they earned over the years. >> right. >> that 60,000 people you've got maybe another quarter million people that are working in food service accommodation, retail, home care, these are also some of the fastest growing jobs, not just in nevada but in the country, and everyone talks like mr. steyer and every politician in nevada talks about we need to create these exciting new jobs of tomorrow.

the jobs projected to grow the most are the jobs we've already got and we have to start dealing with that. >> right. >> i feel that frankly the national media and the candidates have failed to spotlight nevada and how it reflects those issues in the way that it should have been done. >> i just want to put this on. this is what you're sort of referring to, hugh. i've got this from 1964, this is u.s. average hourly wages since 1964. you look at the chart on the bottom and that shows how they've increased from $2.50 to $22.65. now we've adjusted it for inflation and that's the top line. adjusted for inflation the wage in 1964 was $20.27 an hour and today it is $22.65 an hour, and that, laura is the issue. you have a state full of wage earning, we talk about union but put aside the word union for a while. you got service jobs wage earning people and that is the story of their lives. >> yes, right now we're on the

las vegas strip surrounded by service and retail jobs but the truth of the economy is, the rising tides have lifted the big ships and drowned out the rest of the bottom. nevada is also a state that has growing income inequality, and it's something the next president has to serious lay dress. it's not enough just to say the stock market. you have to look at everyone else working to make the businesses run. >> you're absolutely right. thanks to both of you, hugh jackson and laura martin, i appreciate it. michael bloomberg under fire, the onslaught of troubling headlines hitting the former new york city mayor from ndas to a disastrous debate performance. the potential flaws of his candidacy are now exposed. how bloomberg can move ahead from here. more when "velshi" returns from las vegas. en crinkles are your crispy currency to pay for bites of this... ...with this. when kids won't eat dinner,

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it's not good enough. michael bloomberg needs to do a blanket release so all women who have been muzzled by nondisclosure agreements can step up and tell their side of the story. >> senator elizabeth warren is reacting to michael bloomberg's decision to release three women from nondisclosure agreements telling nbc news it's not enough. bloomberg's top political

adviser responded "to be clear three is the total number of ndas that have been i.d.'d over 30-plus years pertaining directly to mike." despite president trump's own allegations of mistreatment of women, "the daily beast" is reporting the president's re-election campaign plans to attack bloomberg on the issue with those familiar with the strategy saying "it would be great for depressing democratic turnout particularly with young voters, should bloomberg win the nomination. "joining me is the former mayor of philadelphia nutter supporting mayor bloomberg. ndas have come under a great deal of criticism including at the company i work for, nbc news. there have been a lot of calls for women subject to ndas. seems like a lay-up. what michael bloomberg did isn't what elizabeth warren and joe

biden were calling for on the stage. do you think this is enough or does he have to do more? >> well he certainly took direct action again as it relates to any of the ndas that specifically involved him, which he is able to do. we're in a political environment obviously, ali, so for other candidates, nothing would pretty much ever be enough because they think that they can score points. the main issue is mike took direct action on the things can he take action on because he was involved in. he did take direct action and went farther in changing the policy of the company stating that as long as he can in charge of the company, there will not

be any ndas going forward involving either sexual harassment or other inappropriate workplace activity. there are very few companies to my knowledge that have that kind of policy in place. he is an executive and leader and that's what leaders do. >> but it should, the leadership part of this is the interesting part. you're right, there are a lot of companies that don't ban ndas or allow that to happen. most of wall street has ndas but the fact is, it's 2020. shouldn't we not be doing that? companies evolve all the time. there is a different environment now that may have existed many years ago and so companies, all companies would have to, will

have to adjust. >> let's pretend this part of the conversation isn't on camera, pretend me its you and me having a conversation. >> okay. >> i ask you after the debate wednesday night, what happened to your guy? >> not his best night, not our best night as a campaign organization, first time on the debate stage with five other very experienced recently experienced candidates in an environment where everyone took multiple shots at mike. i was doing a count so i could keep track of what was going on there, and i think that he just didn't take advantage of the opportunity to tell his story, to talk about his record, to respond both to the attacks but also be on offense to talk about things that he wanted to. i was thinking about this, and of course you know, ali, that

politics is a full contact sport. you know, kansas city chiefs did win the super bowl, but they didn't go 16-0. they had a couple games i'm sure andy reid wished he could have had back. michael did much better on tuesday. i think he got better on wednesday as the evening wore on, so let's say not a great first quarter, got a little time on the break, and then finished strongly in the latter part of wednesday night's debate. he'll do much better on tuesday. >> mike nutter, we'll come out of the secret part of this conversation and pretend we're back on tv. good to see you, former philadelphia mayor. >> that was interesting. >> former bloomberg co-chair. michael bloomberg later this afternoon will sit down with the reverend al sharpton and discuss his performance at the debate, efforts to reach black voters, the controversial ndas and more, today 5:00 p.m. on "politics nation" here on msnbc. i was last here in las vegas

two and a half years ago after the deadliest mass shooting in modern american history and like every mass shooting, congress has done virtually nothing thereafter. that doesn't actually mean things haven't changed a lot. i'll have that next. sleep this amazing?

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las vegas was forever changed for me two and a half years ago on october 2nd, 2017, a day after america's deadliest mass shooting just a few blocks from here. 58 people were killed and more than 700 wounded. it was another one of the times i got a call saying there had been a shooting. my producer and i dropped what we were doing to cover it. every one of those times stretching back to sandy hook shooting we were told by politicians amid the thoughts and prayers things would change but sometimes it often seems when it comes to this country and its fraught relationship with guns, nothing will change. there's a disconnect between

over whelming will of the people for common sense gun laws and the actions of our federal government. 60% of american citizens support some sort of gun control. 71% of americans favor the banning of high capacity magazines. 82% of republicans and 93% of democrats favor stricter background checks at gun shows. trump for his part tends to talk the talk following a mass shooting for a few days or at least until he gets a call from wayne lapierre at the nra and he starts saying guns don't kill people, people kill people. i am and a responsible gun owner who has no issue whatsoever with laws that will keep people safer. just because congress hasn't passed meaningful gun legislation in more than 25 years it doesn't mean there hasn't been any especially lately, right here. nevada has taken steps toward sensible gun control banning bump stocks used in the las vegas massacre. it's enacted red flags for those who may be a danger to

themselves and enforced safe storage of guns. 17 states have enacted red flag laws and seven have passed assault weapons bans. we've seen individual states take action time and again after horrific tragedies. we've seen the amazing kids from parkland stand up and say enough is enough. these laws are not contrary to the second amendment. they are about common sense and modern needs. most gun deaths in america are not a result of mass shootings. they're suicides. most perpetrators of gun vials sh show signs ahead of time. the number of families affected by gun violence continues to rise at a rate unmatched by any other nation. the nra is a protection racket for republican legislators. it's the lobby for the gun industry cloaked as a grassroots organization. i like cars but i don't pay a fee to be part of a carmaker's lobby.

prescription drugs keep me healthy but i don't think the pharmaceutical industry is always working in my interest, and i really want both my carmakers and drugmakers to be well regulated. the nra is not an organization for people. it's a federation of gunmakers which do a great job of fooling people and pressuring lawmakers. but it is not invincible. in the 2018 midterms, gun control advocates actually outspent the nra in candidate funding by nearly $17 million. at least 17 new lawmakers won on a platform of sensible gun laws. the democratically controlled house did pass meaningful gun legislation nearly a years ago. it stall million-dollar the senate where mitch mcconnell won't bring it up for a vote. vegas conjures up different images for different people. for me it's another system where i came to bear witness to senseless death, another city forever touched by tragedy. the senate isn't listening but change will come.

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russia's efforts to once again med until our presidential elections were confirmed this week, but intelligence officials now say president trump's campaign isn't the only one that russia has its eye on. "the washington post" is reporting that officials have uncovered russian efforts to help senator bernie sanders win the democratic nomination but notes it's still unclear exactly how the russians are interfering. "wired" argued this shouldn't be

seen as an endorsement of sanders but indeed as an endorsement of chaos. sanders' reaction to the news differs from trump's response. take a listen. >> mr. putin is a thug. he is an autocrat. he may be a friend of donald trump's. he's not a friend of mine. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded. >> the intelligence community has been very clear about it. they did interfere in 2016. the intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign. >> i have great confidence in my intelligence people but i will tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. >> here is the message. to russia, stay out of american elections.

>> let's just be really, really clear. before everybody goes off and says hey, the russians are involved in both of their campaigns, one of those people is condemning it and the other one is encouraging. the president ousted the acting director of national intelligence, joseph maguire replacing him with this guy, richard grenell and william mcraven is warning "when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil." "nothing left to stop the triumph of evil." just a few months before the election, america, are you listening? joining me malcolm nance, msnbc terrorism analyst and the author of "the plot to betray america" a book that examines in great detail russia's efforts to

influence america's election and policy and harry litman, former deputy assistant director general, attorney general and the host of "talking feds" podcast and columnist at "the washington post." gentlemen, thank you for being here. malcolm, let me start with you. the president is outraged that the intelligence community gave members of congress information that the russians continued to interfere in the 2020 election, the fact that the two of you know very well because he thinks that democrats will use that against him in the election. it kind of feels like he's missing the point on this. >> he's missing the point because he fundamentally does not understand how congress is organized or what their role is. he really thinks that it is a partisan organization in which you have to keep things from the other. he doesn't understand the role of national oversight by the representatives of the people of the united states. so when he heard adam schiff had

the temerity to be in that meeting, he thought this shouldn't be briefed to him. he's a democrat. donald trump does not understand the constitution or what this nation is made of. and that's dangerous, because he's going to probably start with his new political commisar he sent to the director of national intelligence to withholding information from the representatives of the people, and that of course could end up in disaster if we have a terrorist attack or another mass shooting in the united states, in which intelligence could have stopped it, but he stove piped it to just his followers. >> okay, and harry, that's not sort of a weird idea that malcolm's got. in 9/11, the cia had information about the attackers that it did not share with the fbi, and the thinking now, there have been books and movies made about this, is that if they shared that information, there may have

been an ability to prevent 9/11, and the department, the director of national intelligence was created out of that failure, the idea that there needs to be coordination between our intelligence department. so that person who heads that should be possibility one of the smartest brains in intelligence that this country has to offer, and a lot of people think grenell is not that guy. >> he's not an experienced guy. he's one thing and one thing only. he's a trump loyalist, and the whole government now as malcolm says the newcom commisar is on probe to root out all people who are disloyal. mcmaster says there's nothing to stop evil. strong words but true. the key thing you said ali is facts. right now trump really seemed on a campaign to scrub out facts that are unfavorable for him anywhere on the american scene.

that is stalin-esque. i'm not saying it will succeed. you have the courts perhaps to come in as happened this week, but we're talking about really a renewed, not renewed, a torqued up effort which didn't seem possible to literally scrub out history from the mueller probe to the intelligence, to colonel vindman's truthful testimony, if it seems unfavorable to him. it is head-turning. >> and malcolm, there's some technical stuff that is important here. grenell could only serve until march 11th unless the president names someone who is to be nominated, approved by the senate. the president could name someone to keep the clock running so the appointee is always active, and once again like the president would like to have his only

person attorney general, might have his own director of national intelligence. that would be dangerous to the country. >> it would be dangerous to the united states. if i were an ex-kgb director in an enemy state like russia, as vladimir putin is, i would encourage all of this. donald trump himself is dismatling u.s. intelligence. he is putting his own personal opinions above facts. he trusts vladimir putin -- >> who is that good for, malcolm? >> what's it good for? it's not good for anyone. you don't know what nefarious plots and plans are being car rid out against the united states right now and the professionals who passed the data up the chain of command may get to a point where the data won't go any further because the political commissar is too busy

trying to take out individuals in the community because he doesn't like their opinion. in israel, the chiefs are amongst the biggest critics of government because their obligation is to tell the truth, and so are our members of the intelligence community, but right now grenell's job is to root out enemies of the state of the czar, of donald trump in the exact same way that any other petty third world dictator would do it and we are all in danger because of this decision. >> all right, harry, is there any firewall here, is there any way to stop this? this is a second week in a row you and i are talking about a government agency or government department that is being politicized so it could be controlled by the president. is there a backstop? >> the courts, the ballot box but the two worst places for this to happen are intelligence and justice and that's where it's happening. >> yes. former deputy assistant attorney

general harry litman and msnbc terror analyst malcolm nance, thanks very much. this is a serious matter that americans have got to take seriously. still ahead the results from today's nevada caucuses could play in the future of joe biden's presidential run. how he's making his final pitch to voters here before turning his attention to the all-important south carolina. pennsylvania senator and biden supporter bob casey talks to me next. ...i was cured. i faced reminders of my hep c every day. i worried about my hep c. but in only 8 weeks with mavyret... ...i was cured. mavyret is the only 8-week cure for all types of hep c. before starting mavyret your doctor will test... ...if you've had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after treatment. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b, a liver or kidney transplant,... ...other liver problems, hiv-1, or other medical conditions,... ...and all medicines you take. don't take mavyret with atazanavir... ...or rifampin, or if you've had certain liver problems. if you've had or have serious liver problems other than hep c, there's a rare chance they may worsen.

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one time democratic front runner joe biden telling a las vegas crowd last night he has no problem with all the additional scrutiny that comes with running for president, saying he actually embraces it. >> totally appropriate. everybody has gone back and looked through my record. i've been the object of everybody's attention and affection for the last six months. well, that's good. that's not a problem. i'm still standing. >> the former vice president's comments come after wednesday's debate beatdown of mike bloomberg at the hands of multiple candidates. >> mike bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million americans. that's wrong. that's immoral. >> a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. >> you don't look at donald trump and say, we need someone richer in the white house.

>> the strategy leaving some to believe the approach may be the same the democrats will employ against president trump in the election. joining me is senator bob casey, a job biden supporter. thank you for being here. what are you looking for here in nevada and, more importantly, next week in south carolina? in the early days of this campaign, what everybody was saying was even if joe biden is not as strong as he wanted to be in iowa and new hampshire, south carolina would be the fire wall for him because of his remarkable support amongst african-americans. that seems to have been cut into. >> well, ali, i think now we're in states like nevada and south carolina, and ultimately in super tuesday, where the electorate is broad and diverse. that's where joe biden does best. i thought it was interesting in the debate the other night that the debate about health care and joe biden's views on health

care, i think, will play a larger role the further we get into the other primaries. because the president of the united states is afraid of one thing when it comes to health care. he's afraid that our party, and we have to do this, will expose the fact that the president of the united states and his party are going to take away protections for pre-existing conditions. there is no question about that. all the repeal bills do that. all the efforts to sabotage the system will result in those protections being taken away. joe biden fought to get the affordable care act passed, and he's been very clear about reducing health care costs and making sure, no matter what, that those protections for pre-existing conditions remain no matter what. i think as we get into the debate in nevada and south carolina, these other states, pre-existing conditions and the protections there are going to be central. >> senator, let me talk about pennsylvania. a swing state. we saw brand-new polling from

quinnipiac out this week which showed, amongst democrats, health care is the biggest issue, even in pennsylvania. among all voters, the economy in general edges it out. if you are a voter who thinks, according to the polling in pennsylvania, that the economy is your most important issue, you are inclined to believe donald trump's talk about the economy. that is better and the stock market is good and wages are higher. there's evidence to the contrary in many places, or there is evidence that the stock market gains are not shared by a whole lot of working americans. but for some reason, that's resonating in a state like pennsylvania, which one argues a democratic candidate is going to have to win in 2020. >> ali, i think the data you showed earlier about wages and what's happened, if you talk to the average working family, someone a little below middle class, the cost of child care is killing families. seven out of ten american families can't afford it.

seven out of ten. that's the reality. so when it comes to basic costs, the cost of health care itself, we've got to get that down. the cost of child care, all these issues the middle class and low-income families face, joe biden has been fighting on behalf of those issues and those folks for a long time. but we haven't done a very good job as a party. i'm allowed to criticize my party. we have to do a much better job of telling people what's at stake in the election. when we do it in a state like pennsylvania, the numbers on the economy and health care will be very devastating and damaging to donald trump. >> senator, good to see you. thank you for joining me. democratic senator and joe biden supporter bob casey joining us from pennsylvania this morning. we'll be right back.

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that's it for me. i am going to warm up for a little while and hand it over to my friend, joy reid, who is going to take you through not just the couple hours but she'll be here for a while today while we watch these numbers come in or not come in. >> come in. >> do whatever they're going to do. >> not come in. the part about you getting to warm up, not happening. >> yeah. >> this is essentially a kidnapping live on television. >> i'll hang around with you. >> stay with me a little bit. good morning to all of you. welcome to "am joy" live here. beautiful and chilly las vegas, nevada. unlike iowa and new hampshire, a highly diverse group of democratic voters who will pick

their candidate to make donald j. trump a one-term president. this group of voters will vote with the knowledge that russians are trying to help trump stay in power. wait, there's more. on the eve of the nevada caucus, the "washington post" broke the news that bernie sanders has been briefed by u.s. intelligence officials that russia is also trying to boost his presidential campaign. senator sanders confirmed he had been briefed on russia's efforts. unlike russia, if you're listening, trump, sanders responded the way we expect any patriotic american political leader to do. >> look, let me just say a word about russia. mr. putin is a thug. he is an autocrat. he may be a friend of donald trump's. he's not a friend of mine. let me tell mr. putin, the american people, the republicans, democrats, independents, are sick and tired of seeing russia and other countries interfering in our elections. the intelligence community has

been very clear about it. whether trump recognizes it or not, or acknowledges it or not, they did interfere in 2016. intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign right now, in 2020. what i say to mr. putin, if elected president, trust me, you are not going to be interfering in american elections. >> russia's continuing attacks on our democracy do not stop with the presidential election. "time" magazine reports an intelligent official briefed lawmakers that the russians are also meddling in congressional races, aiding some republican candidates and targeting some democratic ones. according to officials familiar with the briefing. as i was preparing to do the show this weekend, i cannot help asking and re-asking and re-asking, how did we get here? i mean, not obviously here in nevada, which has produced legendary politicians like senator harry reid, who opened the democratic debate this week, trying to reinforce our

confidence in our democracy. the one-time senate majority leader, he once held the same job as mitch mcconnell, if you can believe that. was one of the first, if not the first democratic leader in washington to see a young black senator, barack obama, and see a president. he encouraged him not to wait his turn and to run in 2008. how did we get from that to here? we have a president who was helped into office by a foreign adversary, and whose political party seems to have gone beyond even voter suppression, which is bad enough, and is apparently open to taking the help of that foreign government to cling to power. to the point where the president fires anyone who tries to warn him and his party about russian intervention in 2016 or 2020. his party members run to him and tattle on the intel community, not for failing to stop the russian attack but for stitching on russia. meanwhile, our other political party seems to be basically

cracking up in general. locked in a racial generational battle l over how to get out of this mess, either by betting it all or launching a socialist revolution and everything in between. the razor answer is we are here, in large part, because the united states has become one of the most economically unequal countries on earth. not far below russia. when you combine that with being a country that has also been unequal in matters of the race, gender, sexual identity, and any number of ways for so long, and where now, neither party can tamp down the desperation. on the republican side, by giving white americans more citizenship, extra citizenship, but dubois called the higher place in america, segregated schools, exclusive access to where you can seeat and swim. in the trump era, you have it over the brown people and immigrants. on the democratic side, by assuring americans that politics

can fix it, so you don't have to work two and three jobs, and you can afford your medicine and afford to go to college and not have eight roommates. whatever your race and economic chanc race, you ha stance, you have a chance. politics, in short, are broken. joining me now isvelshi, host of "velshi," which you must watch, and also the director here of indivisible. ali, the reason i wanted you to they, i' stay, i've been obsessing over this and getting downhearted in where we are. in what ways is this about an unequal america with two parties fighting to answer people's question of why are we here and how do we fix it? >> it is totally about that. it is an unequal world, and america is a sharper example of it. we are richer than most countries in the world, and we are actually growing in our

inequality. we're going the wrong direction in america. it is prosperity. it's the issue you are not as prosperous as you should have been given what you did. what republicans are doing is they're finding an otherness to blame for that. the blame lies -- you and i talked about it -- you and i blames with us, journalists, academics, economists, politicians who told everybody 50 years ago, increased trade going to be amazing. it'll increase gdp growth. it did. it'll increase profitability and share prices. it did. it is going to increase your wages. well, it didn't do that for a lot of people. we didn't take the winnings from it and fix it. we didn't tell the people, wel we'll retrain you, move you, do something with you. we have an angry population, some are white, and we told them, the within you're in this position is women getting your jobs, asians and blacks and refugees and gays and whatever you want to blame them on. the truth is it is economic inequality that's going around the world. >> that's right. >> that needs to be fixed. >> yeah. >> i think at least democrats are struggling with what the fix looks like.

>> that's right. >> republicans for the moment are not struggling with what the fix looks like. it is bad, and you better keep your attention on keeping those people from getting your piece of the pie. >> yeah. it is very sort of overt, the way that donald trump has sort of made, you know -- turns into human form what used to be the trick of saying, you're downstairs in the thee per and the -- theater and blacks are upstairs. trump is saying, you're better. this is our country. they're from shit-hole countries. it is not going to help. at the end of the day, donald trump is still shoveling money into the hands of billionaires and his friends and corporations. republicans are still doing the thing, and it is on the black and latino, the democratic side, communities of color, like you know what, we see it. >> yes, exactly. >> what do we do about it? >> look, i think as you said, donald trump is really clear on his playbook. democratic leaders have to be clear on ours. there is no space for a lack of

courage. there is no space for being afraid of really saying what we want. latinos, people of color, for too long, waited on broken democratic promises. this presidential has given so much space to movements of people who are shaping this race to actually change the conditions that a lot of people, who have really suffered under oppressed systems, are going to change. for example, united we dream have gotten top progressive candidates to come out and say, in the first 100 days of their administration, bernie sanders and elizabeth warren would have a moratorium deportations. that happened because of people power. to me, i feel actually really grounded in the promise of this presidential primary. i don't feel sort of a flurry of distress. i see people really changing the conditions of how this race is being run. >> yeah. you can't lock out that julio castro has changed and been part of the warren team now. he is part of the warren team. >> that's right. >> let's talk about the strange state of the parties in a way, too. both parties have looked outside of their core to find a leader

who can fix this in their mind, right? >> yeah. >> republican side, they went to donald trump, who has no political ideology, other than having a problem with people who aren't from the united states and anyone making movies from korea. he's an odd duck. this morning, senator sanders talked about the democratic establishment. he's a 30-plus odd year senator that caucuses with the democratic establishment. he wants to be the president of the united states, who would also be the leader of the democratic party. >> yup. >> he is almost saying, this is a hostile takeover, not a merger. we are not in the same party. >> yeah. >> how is it -- >> that's the problem. >> how are both parties running with people saying, we ain't in these parties? >> they cleaved around a few -- they've coalesced around a few key issues. used to be abortion and guns. now, it is abortion, guns, and immigration. it is clear. if you ask most doctrinary republicans, they'll give it in

roughly that order. democrats are struggling with bigger things. fundamentally, if this is economic uncertainty at the bottom, fixing education and health care will fix a lot of these problems for black and brown americans and everybody else. >> yeah. >> what we're not able to do, and i think your point is really clear, we've got to coalesce around a message. i think what christina beltran's point yesterday was this feels like an adult election. if you're waiting for the savior, the savior may not be there. >> right. >> this is about organizing. this is about doing what you saw in 2018. women and people of color and gun sense candidates and people like that ran for office and took back the house. >> yeah. >> that's the kind of thing this has to feel like. this is not about sitting around, deciding which you're voting for on election day. it is getting out there and saying, democracy and capitalism require saving right now. the basic fixes of health care and public education are the places we're going to start to fix it. that is going to make people feel more equal in a good way. doesn't hurt anybody to have better public education and to have better health care.

>> yeah. >> that's what they have to articula articulate. it'll have to feel less like two tents going in different directions. everybody who watched wednesday's debate has a different opinion. was it a firing squad and were they all bad and wreck it, or did they breathe new energy into this fight? i'd like to be optimistic and say, thanks to mike bloomberg, they breathed new energy into it. >> or we have an election in which, because the country is cracking up, foreign entities are coming in and being able to seriously exploit it. >> yes. >> you have john brennan and sally yates. we're in a full-blown national security crisis, says john brennan, trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to congress. trump is trying to stay in office. sally yates says it is a siren, the barrage of crazy. can we hear it anymore? we changed the iran government by getting rid of the leader. it's been done in the past. it is happening to us now. there was a piece called "america is collapsing into

fascism" because americans don't understand it. brilliant article if anyone read it. he talks about the fact that when the conditions will underpin democracy crumble, people run toward fascism and may run the other direction, socialism. ten countries with the highest inequality, we're two below russia. netherlands, russia, sweden, united states. i'm going in order. more republicans than democrats support expanding presidential power. the share of republicans who believe presidents could be more effective if they did not have to consider the other branches of government has increased 16 percentage points since last year. more than four in ten think a president should be an autocrat, right? a little more. on the other side, millenials are starting to lose faith in capitalism. you're starting to see among millennial and gen-zers, 51%,

just over half, feel positively to gen-zers. the we can do anything generation is a little more positive. baby boomers, goes up from there. we are in a situation, ali, where there is less belief in capitalism and democracy on the republican side. >> i have this argument with my daughter all the time. the analogy i use is that i sometimes have problems with my plumbing. i call a plumber over. i don't ask them to dismantle the plumbing. i ask them to fix my plumbing. >> right. >> the hot water can flow. that's what we have to do with capitalism. i am a capitalist, economics journalist. i can look and say, it is absolutely broken. the distribution part of it, which is supposed to get stuff everywhere, is not working. it is a global problem. we do actually have to fix it. you have to look at all the component elements that are broken. health care, digital stuff, the treatment of women in society and how we deal with that, the treatment of people of color. if you actually fixed it all, we could have a working capitalism. this concept of 43% of americans thinking that greater presidential power is the answer, that is exactly what leads to totalitarianism and

authoritariani authoritarianism, and it removes the checks and balances on what this country was built. that's something the founder fathers put in. >> i could be pay oway off, but could be the americanization of america. if you look across the continent, right, there's a lot of this tug between plutocracy and socialism. it is happening in other countries in the americas. it hasn't happened to us. this feels a lot more like the election we just had in mexico. there was a question about it in the debate. do people -- can they remember the name? these are the kind of elections in the americas that happen. it feels like we're having the same thing. >> you know, i think about this from the prism of i come from an immigrant community. a lot of latinos, especially older latinos, have a generational proximity because of the countries they come from. they're not foreign questions for folks. my parents are from nicaragua. they're clear on what

authoritarianism looks like and are noting the signals. i'm a millennial, skeptical of capitalism from looking at my parents who have ideology that displaced them . it's not that we all shouldn't have access to health care and education, but we should be clear on the checks of one person. for me, there needs to be expansive solutions to the pain we're seeing in this country. and we, as people, need to take ownership of our democracy. >> that's right. >> no one is going to save us but people. >> absolutely. it is interesting that one of the things we all have in common, as people of color, people with immigrant parents, people with immigrant backgrounds, we see america sort of from a 30,000-foot view sometimes. it can be an interesting view when you're looking at a country where people are only living here. this has been a great conversation. ali velshi, maria, you're great. thanks. up next, the country is on the line.

amid that, is the democratic party headed for the rails without the brakes? that's a scary question. two of the party's leaders will be here to talk about it. more "am joy" live from vegas next. [ applause ] thank you. it's an honor to tell you that liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. i love you! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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nevada is a state that's representative of the country. it's diverse. it's heavily unionized. we saw the debacle in iowa. we saw what happened in new hampshire. iowa and new hampshire do not represent the makeup of the united states. that's why pundits are saying, and i am saying, that we should have nevada as the first state to vote. >> today is the democrats first caucus since iowa. didn't exactly inspire confidence in the democratic nominating process. nevada's democratic party has been trying to ensure the same mess doesn't happen here. including scrapping plans to use the developer behind the faulty app in iowa. it's not just bad tech that the dnc is contending with. there's also questions about how

michael bloomberg's tsunami is influencing the race, and a possibility of a contested convention in july. joining me now is the chair of the dnc, tom perez, who can answer some of the questions. and william mckerrty, chair of the nevada democratic party. chair minnesoman and chairman. you first, sir. the race tonight, are we going to see election results tonight? >> yes. the goal has been from day one of the nevada democratic party is accuracy. we want to preserve the integ u integrity of this process. we are certain we'll have something out today, but the goal is accuracy. >> i have to say, as someone who worked in politics a little bit, this state has the -- this is the envy of every state party in the united states. this is the best democratic state party in the country. i'll say that. i used to envy it when i was in florida. we should have confidence in it. you're using paper.

is that how you're getting the results in? >> we realized we need to make sure we had a process that voters could feel confident in. we know that this process is going to work. we've been training day in and day out, working around the clock to ensure that we secure a successful caucus process. >> one other thing that "politico" reported. there are people who are still nervous. interviews with "politico," and we'll say it is one media outlet saying that three caucus volunteers described rushed preparations for the election, including insufficient training for newly adopted electronic vote tally system and instructions on how to measure the caucuses. should you be worried about that? >> not at all. we thank or volunteers for all the work they do to ensure this party continues to be the best in the country. listen, talk about what happened. we had -- saw a lot. what happened was less than ideal. what we made sure to do was implement a process and make sure we trained our volunteers on how they can continue to

deliver throughout this process with early vote. also on caucus day. we really like what we've been able to do. since, actually, saturday, we've been able to hold over 50 trainings and have over 1,400 people trained since that day. we've been working day in and day out. >> you saw harry reid in the intro here. harry reid built a powerhouse party. you look at the number of democrats that are elected in this state, starting with the governor, the attorney general, the senators. it's a -- we have the statehouse, state senate majority female. i bring that up simply because that organization is what is helping make today work. we're proud to assist them, and we're going to have a very good day here. the people who we met at early voting the other day, the determination that they had, we need to take out trump thm. >> yeah. >> our goal is to make sure this day is about the candidates, not

the process. >> it is a mixed sort of early vote plus caucus. it is sort of a hybrid. it is getting closer. do you see this becoming a primary though going forward? >> our goal is to make sure that we handle where we are right now. that was putting on the first ever early vote as any of the caucus states. it was successful. we had over 75,000 people participate. >> yeah. >> we'll have a successful caucus. >> let's move on to the other sort of fear that people have. let me play for you a little piece of the debate we had, the nbc debate. here is chuck todd asking a pointed question to the panel -- or to elizabeth warren. >> should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority? >> one of the rules of the democratic party are they should be followed. >> you want the convention to work, its will? >> it means people have deleg e delegates that are pledged to them and they keep it until you come to the convention.

>> leading person? >> all of the people. >> leading person with the delegates, should they be the nominee or no? >> let the process work its way out. >> buttigieg? >> not necessarily. >> senator klobuchar? >> let the process work. >> the will of the people should prevail, yes. >> thank you, guys. >> the one with the most votes should be the nominee. >> mr. chairman, you, sir. should we be concerned we're heading toward a contested convention? are you concerned about that? >> joy, i'm not concerned about that at this point. because we've allocated 65 delegates. you need 1991 delegates to get the nomination on the first ballot. i used to run marathons. this is somewhere between maybe mile 1 and mile 2 of the marathon. nevada hasn't spoken. communities of color at scale have not spoken yet. >> that's true. >> politics is often -- these processes are often momentum. we'll see what happens in the weeks ahead. >> think somebody will have 1,990 delegates going in? >> 1,991 is the magic number.

it is conceivable someone will get it. that is the rule. we sat down in 2018, everybody. we came together around a series of reforms. we reduced the role of super delegates. we created -- you always have to have 50% plus one. it is not a new rule. that's been in place 40 years. >> right. >> 40% at the end of the day is not enough. >> let me ask you this. those, that unity convention where you made the new rules, they felt to democrats like they were done to appease the bernie sanders team, right, the bernie sanders campaign. and a lot of the rules were built to help him get the nomination in a lot of ways, right? now, you have him likely to have, or maybe have, most of the delegates, more delegates but not enough. if he has more delegates, senator sanders, than anybody else, but not 1,991, how would the nominee be chosen? >> again, the rules clearly --

again, everybody was involved in the creation of these rules. we adopted these rules with overwhelming consensus. people who supported secretary clinton, senator sanders, somebody else, everybody supported them. if you don't get to 1,991, 50% plus one, then you go to a subsequent ballot. at that point, super delegates, under the rules everybody adopted, would be permitted to vote. >> a lot of people also felt that taking away super delegates' power took a lot of power away from people of color. a lot of african-americans, a lot of latinos who were state officials. that's all a super delegate is. they are a dedicated party member from one of the states. the legs were cut out from under th them. in a contested convention, they'd have less authority. >> when you reduce the power of delegates, i understood the concern but it's not the case. you have to look at who super delegates were. super delegates are members of the united states senate. pretty white group. they're governors.

a pretty white group. it's gotten better because of the house caucus. when i heard the argument that this will reduce the power of communities of color, we actually looked at that number. the pledge delegates who are the ones voting on the first ballot are actually more demographically representative of america. >> let me read real quick, and i'll bring you both back in here. michael bloomberg is quietly, apparently, plotting for a contested convention. he is not playing in these first four primaries and caucuses. bloomberg is privately lobbying, per politico, the democratic party officials and donors, allied with his moderate opponents, to flip their allegiance to him and block sanders in a contested convention. the effort attempts to prime bloomberg for a second ballot contest at the democratic national convention in july by poaching supporters of joe biden and other moderate democrats, according to two democratic strategists familiar with talks and unaffiliated with bloomberg.

what would happen? i'll ask you first, the state chair, what would happen if bernie sanders, let's say, were to win the nevada caucus, and he were to do well on super tuesday but not have enough delegates. in a second ballot, bloomberg, who didn't even play in nevada, were to broker himself the nomination anyway. what do you think would happen to the party? >> well, our party is resilient, number one. we have, for a long time, been able to -- whatever the differences may be, we've been able to come together. i believe whatever happens, we're going to be united in making sure we will defeat donald trump. number one, let's talk about nevada for a little bit. we are the first early state that reflects the diversity of not only the democratic party but also the rest of the country. i will say, let's pump the brakes a little bit. let's see what infonevada has t say, which has, again, one of the highest diversity, one of the most diverse of the early states.

let's see how candidates will do here, leading them to a successful super tuesday. then we'll have the discussion later. >> except that michael bloomberg is playing with a tsunami of money. $450 million in ads so far since launching his campaign. and the man who is leading in most of the polls throughout the country is not only not a registered democrat, hasn't renl st registered as a democrat, has refused, and tweeted this morning, it's trending, the democratic establishment, that means you guys, the democratic establishment will not stop him from getting the nomination. he is presenting what he is doing as a hostile takeover, not a merger with the party that he caucuses with in the senate. my question, again, is do you worry, as chairman, as somebody who has dealt with the sanders team, some of whom voted for jill stein and were allowed to come in and negotiate the rules, do you not worry that if sanders is denied the nomination, even under rules he agreed to, that there will be civil war in the democratic party? >> you know what, everybody understands -- what is different

than 2020, there's a lot of ptsd about 2016. >> i think everyone has that. >> you know what is different about 2020? donald trump and the existential threat to our nation. every single one of the candidates on the debate stage for the nbc/msnbc debate the other night is ahead of donald trump head-to-head in the "washington post" polling, quinnipiac polling from a week ago. we understand this is not about any one candidate. >> but does everyone understand that? i understand you're saying that, but the senator is saying, who is an independent, he is an independent and still is a registered independent, as far as we know, he is saying this morning, in his own twitter feed, under his own name, that the democratic establishment will not stand in his way. essentially sort of kicking to the curb 65 million people who voted for hillary clinton, obama democrats, people who consider themselves lifelong democrats. is he not one of them? is he one of them, or is he running against them? >> the person who gets 50% plus one of the delegates is going to be our next nominee.

every single person who is not that person has taken a pledge to make sure that they come together. this is not about -- it's not about any one of the candidates on the stage. it is about america's future. it's about our democracy as we know it. people have stepped up 2017, '18, and '19, understanding that the stakes are unlike anything in our life. >> we're out of time. i'm getting a wrap. i have two quick questions. number one, is senator sanders becomes the democratic nominee, and if he is president, will the democratic national committee require him to register as a democrat in order to -- he would essentially run the democratic national committee. would he have to register as a democrat to do that? >> he has filed for president as a democrat. it's been done. >> last question, and this is nevada, then we'll go. will the order change in the next four years? next four years, we will have the same order, iowa, new hampshire, nevada, south carolina, or will it become a more diverse state like this one going first? >> the end of every race, every cycle, we look at what went

right, what went wrong, and what we have to do. two things we'll have a discussion about next time are, number one, the role of caucuses, and number two, order. i think it is long overdue we have the conversation. last time after the 2016 campaign, we did super delegate reform. we did reform primaries and caucuses. there were 14 caucus states four years ago. there's seven now. we need to continue that discussion. frankly, it's time. >> yeah. chairman perez, thank you. chairman mckerrty. i love the diversity. president trump tries to pass the russian collusion ball to bernie.

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what does matter is this, the russians successfully meddled in our democracy, and our intelligence agencies have concluded they will do so again.

>> well, he was right. the "new york times" revealed friday that intelligence officials briefed lawmakers last week that russia is once again attempts to interfere in our election to help donald trump win again. rather than do something, anything to protect the integrity of our democracy, trump turned on his top intel official, acting director of national intelligence joseph maguire. repeatedly baa raer rai baradine house. he promoted richard grenell to the post instead. it is not just donald trump that russia is seeking to help. we also learned late friday the bernie sanders campaign has been briefed on russia's attempts to interfere on his behalf, too. joining me now is former federal prosecutor glen kirshner. this feels like a 911 right now. we've now learned not only is

rushy attemsia attempting to he again using the same playbook before, boosting the sanders campaign again to divide the democratic party, but they're also reaching down into congressional races, too, which essentially gives one of our political parties a vested interest in letting them do it. what do we do about that? >> it is a great question, joy. one thing that i think we should do, one thing i think americans should expect is that the director of national intelligence should be somebody with the kind of extensive national intelligence experience that is required for the job. yet, we're getting the exact opposite. i mean, right now, i think intelligence matters are at their zenith of importance to the safety and security of our elections. particularly because we know mitch mcconnell refuses to bring to the floor for a vote any of the election security measures passed by the house. so who does the president

install as the acting dni, director of national intelligence? this character, grenell. if you read his bio and have seen the interviews he's given, joy, not to be a smart aleck about it but it'd be the giants hiring peewee herman for its quarterback. grenell has been saying things like, and i'll quote him, that our embassies around the world should be, quote, mini commerce sections, having nothing to do with diplomacy. it should all be transactional, and it should involve what can we get economically and financially out of the countries where our embassies are situated. he said things like, you know, political developments in foreign countries are super interesting and, quote, completely irrelevant.

he suggests we should get all of our information about political developments in other countries from, quote, the internet. you can't make this up. it is not a "saturday night live" skit. when you ask, what can we do? you know, it seems like one thing we should demand, and goodness, i hope that the intel committees and the house and the senate demand, that somebody like ric grenell cannot be leading up, coordinating all of the information among the many intelligence agencies that are supposed to be defending our country against interference in our elections. >> yeah. just to put a finer point on that, in what the "atlantic" called the trump administration sort of emerging into the trump regi regime, to that point, alex ward, national security reporter at vox, tweeted the following. i asked a senior white house official if trump really removed mr. maguire, who was the former

dni, over the russia briefing. the official didn't mince words. that's absolutely why. anyone from here on out that opposed potus will get fired. that bad, i asked. yup, official said. he's not f-ing around. ward went on to tweet that he meant to type "opposes," not "opposed." so we essentially have fully loyalists only allowed to be inside the trump administration. no expertise required, just blind, naked loyalty to donald trump. >> joy, we see what donald trump is doing. the pattern is unmistakable. i mean, for goodness sake, betsy devos in charge of education. andrew wheeler, the administrator of the epa, who before taking that position was an attorney working on behalf of coal magnets and lobbying against the obama administration's environmental protections. now, dni maguire is fired, and the acting dni is going to be

this ric grenell character. we see what he is doing, right? he is dismantling the government brick by brick, agency by agency. we have a state department that is really decimated. we have a department of justice that is demoralized. we have now an intelligence committee being headed up by, or at least coordinating efforts by somebody who has no qualifications to be in the job. we see what the president is doing. he is destroying the government for the sake of destroying the government. he doesn't have any idealogical principles he's governed by. he is really just trying to tear things down. steve bannon would say, deconstruct the administrative state. you know, there's a handful of republicans in the congress that can hold them accountable and that can turn this tide and that can actually start to work in favor of election security, in favor of the security of our nation and the american people. for goodness sakes, they need to stand up and start doing their job and taking their oath

seriously. >> yeah. seems to be actually one in the senate, mitt romney, who at least has some desire to do something other than take the knee. let's go to the other side of this. the other thing donald trump is doing is sort of demonstrations of what loyalty can buy you. roger stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison. the case, per the "new york times," was thrown into disarray last week when attorney general barr overruled a sentencing recommendation by career prosecutors who quit the case in protest. you've had thousands, more than, i think, a thousand former members of the department of justice, or officials of the department of justice object vehemently to the way william barr is running his shop. here is donald trump talking about roger stone on wednesday, right here in las vegas. >> before we go any further, i want to address today's sentencing of a man, roger stone. roger stone. he's become a big part of the news over the last little while. i'm following this very closely,

and i want to see it play out to its fullest. because roger has a very good chance of exoneration in my opinion. >> exoneration. he's already been convicted. he's already a felon. you have roger stone's lawyers filing to seek to disqualify the judge. you have blagojevich, the former governor of illinois, likening himself to nelson mandela, dr. king, political prisoner. what is this? this doesn't sound like a normal democracy's justice system, glen. >> yeah, this is the president sort of acting as what he believes he is, which is the chief law enforcement officer of the country. you know, i think we all sense that a pardon is likely to come for roger stone. can i tell you, joy, there may be no way of stopping that. as a career -- former career prosecutor, here is how i would use that. judge amy berman jackson, a

really fine, respected jurist who was the judge in roger stone's case, said at the record at roger stone's sentencing hearing on thursday that roger stone's lies to congress and his tampering with a witness was designed to cover up for the president of the united states. if the president decides to grant the person who perpetrated that coverup of pardon, i think that would be corrupt. i think once donald trump is out of office, that will be used as an overt act in a conspiracy charge against donald trump for defrauding the united states. there is so much more to come on this. >> yeah. the trick there is to get a free and fair election where there can be a president who isn't donald trump. that is the trick if we can even have an election that we can trust. that's the rub. glen kirshner, great to talk to you. thank you, my friend. >> thank you, joy. up next, more "am joy" live from vegas next.

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here's a great idea. join us here on msnbc all day long for special coverage of the nevada caucus. brian williams, nicole wallace, chris matthews, ari melber and yours truly break down the incoming results live with steve kornacki at the big board. watch our continuing coverage of the nevada caucus today at 2:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. but first there's more "a.m. joy" live from las vegas. ist-a-s now starting at $7.99. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. and my lack of impulse control,, is about to become your problem. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier.

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the do nothing democrats, they said today that putin wants to be sure that trump gets elected. here we go again. here we go again. i was told a week ago. they said, you know, they're trying to start a rumor, it's disinformation. that's the only thing they're good at. they're not good at anything else. they don't get anything done. the do nothing democrats. that putin wants to make sure i get elected. listen to this, doesn't he want to see who the democrat is going to be? wouldn't he rather have, let's

say, burnie. >> welcome to "a.m. joy." for those of you getting ready to vote in a democratic caucus, maybe you're agonizing over your choice. your job got more complicated because this week we got confirmation that whoever becomes the democratic nominee for president will not be just running against donald trump. they'll be running against donald trump and vladimir putin. we learned from reports from "new york times," "the washington post" and msnbc news that donald trump knows that too. and when he learned that the republicans and democrats on the house intelligence committee, including adam schiff, who led the impeachment trial against him were briefed that russia already started working in to interfere with the elections, donald trump fired him. and we learned they're in a congressional elections too to ensure that trump has a friendly

republican congress to help them implement their -- i mean, his, plans. we learned just yesterday that a month ago, senator bernie sanders was briefed by intelligence officials that russian intelligence is also targeting his campaign to boost him. much the way the mueller report concluded they did in 2016. here's senator sanders response, in contrast to president trump's and republicans collective shrug. >> let me say this about russia. mr. putin is a thug. he's an auto cat. he may be a friend of mr. trump's, he's not a friend of mine. american people, whether you're republicans, democrats or independence, are sick and tired of seeing other countries interfering in our elections. the intelligence community has been clear about it. whether trump recognizes it or not or acknowledges it or not, they did interfere in 2016, the intelligence community is telling us they're interfering

in this campaign right now, in 2020. and what i say to mr. putin, if elected president, trust me, you are not going to be interfering in american elections. >> and that is how it's actually supposed to sound, what they're supposed to say. let's be clear this morning, america. this is nothing less than a national emergency. our upcoming election isn't going to be compromised, it's already happening p and the president and the republican party's only concern is no one will snitch. so it's not if. it's when russia messes with the democratic primary, when they dump disinformation, when they try to manipulate the november election to keep their pet american president, donald trump, in power, trump will be accepted that help. not just as a candidate but with the full powers of the united states presidency behind him and having gutted the national security council, having floated pardons to cronies, including

potentially roger stone who offered himself between trump and wikileaks. having his administration offer julian assange a pardon if he would just say that russia did not attempt to attack. and with an attorney general who's acting more mafia than attorney general of the american people. so which candidate demonstrated they were ready for thatti kindf fight. i'm going to come to those sitting with me right now. i want to play bernie sanders a little bit more of what he said. this is when he was asked about the timing of the story coming

out about russia also trying to help his campaign. take a listen. >> a month ago, how do you think it came out now if hyou had the briefing a month ago. >> i'll let you guess one day before the nevada caucus, it was "the washington post"? good friends. >> so i give senator sanders an a-plus on his initial response to the way that russia -- we learned that russia was jumping into this campaign. i'm not sure i give that an a-plus, because that is a little more on the trumpy side, instead of saying this is something important to come out, i don't care how it came out, i'm glad i know it. he tried to pass it off as an attack by "the washington post." >> malcolm x said i'm for truth no matter who tells it. i'm concerned that there's so much surprise against the democratic base that this is

even happening on all sides. we can't be surprised by things that should be expected. we knew in 2016 this election was deeply compromised. black and brown folks have been telling you elections have been compromised for a long time. and we should have been on top of this the entire time. the second that hillary clinton lost, there should have been an all-out attack on the attacks on our elections. and we've got plenty of work to do around voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement this adds to the work that needs to be done. and we're not urgent the pomp and circumstance be won't matter because our voice won't be heard. >> what concerns me, you have the person leading in the poll, senator sanders, this morning waging war against the democratic establishment. if he becomes the nominee, he has to consolidate those people.

but it sounds as if he's dismissing all of those voters as not needed and just the revolution will win. i am concerned that russia has won in the sense the democratic party is completely fragmented and i do not see a path for it coming back to together. >> you should concerned. the fact we have a democratic senator presidential candidate pointing at the media saying that this is the enemy, ostensible, he didn't say it clearly, but ostensibly, we should have known this a lot of time. las vegas is beautiful, we see the strip, it's land, and those 27 native communities are going to do work today in the nevada caucuses. that's important because voter suppression against those 27 native communities has been real here in nevada, it's been very real in north dakota, south dakota, my point is that this president will do anything to

ensure that his regime continues so we can't possibly act surprised. and doing so is maybe disingenuous, naive or downright stupid. >> one thing that indigenous communities know, don't trust and verify. >> yes. >> that needs to be the attitude of all democrats when it comes to what's going on here. let's go to michael, because you did write this book, "whether we can keep it". we have donald trump taking over youtube's home page, he's bought all the time and he's going to pump his propaganda into the minds of people on youtube. you have a billion dollar campaign to re-elect him. trump's advise ers per the atlantic believe the election will be decided by mobilization not persuasion. the campaign signalled it will return to familiar themes, threat of, quote, illegal

aliens, a term parscale has reportedly encouraged trump to use and the corruption of the, quote, swamp. and it's allowing a texting platform that would allow them to send messages to millions of voters' phones without their permission. i've heard donald trump's lin go thrown back on them just on the treat. this is what's happening, he's already invaded with his propaganda and it's coming out of the mouths and tweets and soon out of the facebook pages of his people. he has a plan. do democrats have a plan to stop it? >> i don't see how democrats can have a plan to stop it, joy. whatever happened in 2016, that's not really what's going to happen in 2020. what's going to happen in 2020 is going to be new and it's going to be worse. because bad guys think of bad stuff baa before good guys do. it's kind of the essence of what makes them the bad guys. so they're going to think of stuff that those of us sitting

on this panel having this discussion can't possibly imagine. they're going to think of stuff that our law enforcement agencies can't imagine. yes, these protrump messages of going to get into people's brains in ways we don't realize. so 2016, i don't think prepared us for what is going to be happening this time. another point i'd like to make, blame trump, blame trump, blame trump, absolutely. but we have a political party, one of our two political parties that doesn't care this is happening. is perfectly happy it's happening. that's unprecedented and worth noting. >> we should note we talk about mr. bloomberg, donald trump and bernie sanders. there are a lot of other people running this is a full campaign with people running, there are women running. there are all sorts of people that are running that can be president.

don't think these are the limited options. you have the trump world eating up facebook to the point officials are afraid to test republicans or make them mad. they gobbled up the advantage on things like social media, using the internet and those platforms in a stronger way. on the democratic side you have the most active really sort of twitter presence is the sanders campaign which for a lot of people is tormenting them. a lot of people i know feel tormented constantly, including on social media, including black media folks. and now you have the sanders campaign hinting maybe those people aren't real, maybe a lot of them are foreign. it seems to be so toxic on the democratic side, they can't organize to fight. >> thank you for coming to me after mr. happy fun guy. >> scaring is caring. >> i am really -- i am now

really energized to move to a cave in nova scotia and never be seen again. you're right. i think, basically, the democratic voter has got to toughen up. they've got to stop being afraid of all the stuff that's happening online. they've got to stop being afraid of the possibility that bernie sanders might be the nominee. they've got stop being afraid of what the russians will do and get out there and do something positive. i always go back to the anecdote about when ulysse s. grant came from the west to take over the union army in the east and the sub generals were saying robert e. lee will do this or that. and finally grant lost his temper and said stop worrying about what he's going to do to me and worry about what you're going to do to him. i think if you want to find where you're going to find the

courage, look to native voters, the african-american voters, they've been fighting this for 200 years. i don't want to pump up jesse's ego too much but when i was going to iowa he sent me an email he said there's an indian reservation in iowa you should go to. i went and talked to the people there, we started talking about voter suppression and, you know, voter disinfranchisement and their answer to me was welcome to the club. where y'all been for 200 years? >> good point. your name has been called so you get to respond. >> absolutely. you know, charlie is 100% right. it's funny, always a funny guy. but the settlement in iowa is a perfect example of the resilience we've had to go through. that doesn't mean we get

comfortable with the cyber terrorism and the information campaign and stuff like that. but we have to be prepared and expect it. we can't get to t"the 11th hou," the nevada caucus and say we're surprised. no these tribes expect it. they're going to go out and perform still, get out and get the vote and make some change. for white voters you have to expect it, it's happening to you now. >> the other thing happening, this is for white voters and some cases black voters in the republican side. when it doubt just pay. offer cash. the party that says it's against socialism. the republicans claim the worst thing in the world is socialism. however, when you're ruining farmers' lives and causing more farm bankruptcies, farm suicides through your tariffs, taxes on the american people and which are gutting the farm bill, you pay them off.

here is donald trump in all caps, if our formally targeted farmers need additional aid until such time as the trade deals with china, mexico, canada and others fully kick in, that aid will be provided by the federal government, paid for out of the massive tariff coming into the usa. so we're going to destroy you with tariffs and then restore you with welfare. the welfare cheats in the reagan era was black and brown women. they're saying, farmers no you get welfare. and there's something for the black voters. here's some money. the blackout reach team of the campaign is handing out money. there it is. have some money. >> there you go. >> essentially on the republican side they'll do anything, including pay cold hard cash, is

that part of the reason that you're seeing, if people are paying, let's take bloomberg and let him pay. >> as we've been talking about, it's been a long road to get here, a rocky road and a road in which people have gotten used, frankly, to being disenfranchised. i think of candidates like elizabeth warren, julian castro appealing to the section of marginalized voters, poor folks, women of color, indigenous people. and having those questions in those communities about whether our vote is going to count, that's -- i'm incredibly worried about the long-term impact this is going to have. folks are saying i don't know if putin stole my vote, somebody with a bag of vote, the mass incarceration stole my vote, i want my vote back. i deserve it. my ancestors fought for it.

if we try to expand the base to include voices that have not been included for a long time. you can ask stacey abrams, it doesn't matter to expand the base if their voices are going to be silenced. >> it's strange to wake up in america where millionaires, and affluent folks, mayor pete isn't the only one that isn't, millionaires and billionaires are fighting over to how to save poor people and middle class. so you have this mix of class, race, gender all happening at the same time. and the billionaires are saying let us run it directly. we won't pay for lobbyists, we'll run your country, whether it's trump who may be a billionaire, he won't release his taxes or it's michael bloomberg, yeah, i'll run it for you. >> i remember when mike

bloomberg first ran for new york mayor. he spend -- i think candidates up to that point were spending 8 or $10 million to get elected. he spent 75. s it was obscene but he said, nobody owns me, nobody bought me. and that has been an argument that self-financing, wealthy people have been able to use with some success to a big chunk of the public. but i think now we reached a point where a new corner has been turned where it's not just so great anymore that they're self-financing, they're buying their way into office which is an thet cal to principles of democracy and principles we hoped this country was founded on and are being more and more corrupted with everything election that goes on. i said nothing but pessimistic things. >> that's because your name isn't joy, michael.

>> no, it sure isn't. >> you don't have to. charlie, it's working in a sense. look at these head-to-heads that each of these -- this is the abc washington post poll, joe biden versus trump, he still -- once you have an established sort of reputation, it's hard to take it away from you. joe biden is still beating trump in polls, bernie sanders, 51/45. the thing consistent across the polls is donald trump has a hard time getting above 45, 46% against anybody. it looks like in theory folks can vote for who they like and who wins. but look at the fact bloomberg has caught on in a lot of ways doing this. it's kind of working for him. >> we don't know that yet. we really don't know the impact of, you know, the train that ran over him the other night. i'm a great guy, so i'm going to give him one more debate. i'm a great guy so i'm going to give him one more debate and an

opportunity not to look like road kill. but right now he's -- right now, once you get him out of the commercials, he's a terrible candidate. outside of admiral stock dale, who had the excuse of having been a pow for four or five years, he was the worst main stage national candidate i ever saw the other night. >> yeah, no, i mean -- >> we're going to have to -- he's going to have to be a candidate -- frankly, i don't know why bloomberg's people put him on a debate stage or insisted he be included on a debate stage two weeks before he's going to be on a ballot anywhere. they could have carpet bombed the airwaves and gotten to super tuesday. >> they got tricked by the snl skit where it looked so easy, right. it's interesting, i've had a lot of -- black women have been coming up to me a lot saying is bloomberg going to be okay? he's the only one that can save

us? that's theoretical bloomberg. real bloomberg is essentially elizabeth warren's lunch. she drank his milk shake. >> not to -- sorry. >> huh? what? now you got to say it. say it. >> i was going to say, her basic message, which came across the other night of anti-corruption is, i think -- who knows whether it'll -- you know, propel her anywhere. but that's the message to hit this guy with. and the message to hit the entire political system with. you can go now. absolutely. we'll see if it works. we can go now, charlie has disrupted the entire thing, as he will do. thank you all very much. we're trying to solve some stuff up here. now it's possibly now or never for joe biden and we are live from las vegas.

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mr. vice president, we've been talking about south carolina as your firewall. it feels like the whole campaign. what is it about this state that makes you so confident about it? >> i've not been calling it a firewall, you all have and others have. i feel good because i've had really good support from the african-american community throughout the years. everyone knows i've had barack's back and he's had mine. it's the first time we're in a state with a significant african-american community. so things that have mattered to the african-american community have mattered to me my whole career. >> joe biden needs a win. the former vice president lost his lead in the polls following

disappointing results in iowa and new hampshire. he's hoping a strong showing in more diverse nevada and south carolina will put his campaign back on track. without a decisive finish in both contests it's not clear what the path forward is for his campaign. joining me now is the senior addad adviser for joe biden's campaign. does he need to win? >> he doesn't need to do win, but we need to do well the the state's fastest growing populations is asian-americans and we have strong support in that community. there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm for joe biden. i was with him last night at his closing argument, he had the audience in tears and people were ready to caucus. >> the thing is, people just call him joe, right? >> that's right. >> he has an established

likability factor, people like him. he was the loyal vice president to the most popular democratic priority in our lifetime, president obama. he gets that as a give me, particularly with voters of color. but now other candidates are trying to hone in on that and take that from him. here are other candidates, former vice president talking with mike memle about other candidates trying to take away his obama factor. >> if you look around everyone running is acting like they were barack's best friend. you have bernie talking about it, you have mayor bloomberg. i saw elizabeth warren is running barack ads. the same people were talking about how these problems didn't start just with trump. >> you know, even senator sanders -- i do remember this,

when he talked about primary president obama has tied himself to adds with president obama, you had elizabeth warren warren who worked with president obama to make the consumer protection bureau. you go on and on, everyone is doing the same time. has the obama-bestie card been watt erred down? >> i don't think so. remember in the early debates a number of candidates attacked president obama and that legacy and joe biden had his back. he's a loyal vice president to the first african-american president in country, people won't forget that. when you look at the other candidates trying to wrap their arms around barack obama, it doesn't have the same effect. recall bernie sanders, who tried to primary him. if you try to primary a sitting president, the sitting president usually loses but thank goodness

bernie sanders wasn't successful. but people know that joe biden have their back, like he had the back of barack obama. >> we can put up an emerson poll, it shows that joe biden is holding onto black voters -- older black voters but he's sharing younger black voters, under 30, with senator sanders. why do you think that is happening? >> polls are going to move up and down a little bit. but what we look after 2016 what did the trend lines show over time. a poll is a snapshot in time. we've seen vice president biden does well, squiconsistently wel with communities of colors, whether it's latinos, african-americans, and we see a little bit of the flexibility there, but we think coming out of nevada we'll do well. looking forward to getting back

out there tonight. and then on super tuesday, a diverse mix of states in the south with a strong mix of african-american and latinos community. >> are you disappointed that the culinary union did not endorse him? >> it wasn't disappointing. when we landed a couple days ago, the first stop we made was culinary, there was a huge round of applause for the vice president. we arrived and spent a lot of time with culinary workers. when he's president of the united states culinary and labor movement will never have a better friend in the white house than joe biden. >> if the former vice president does not do well here or in south carolina, is that it? do you think he would end his campaign? >> we're going to do well out here. >> you're confident? >> i'm very confident. >> does the former vice president have money to pivot from here to south carolina to super tuesday in seven or eight

days? >> we have enough money to succeed and get the job done. last week after the debate was the best online fund-raising we've had since the launch of the campaign. and our folks who have backed vp biden from the beginning are not flaky. they're going to stick with him. they've known him a long time, first as a senator and then as a vp to barack obama. >> are they prepared to fight a russian attack on him, which you've seen donald trump launch vis-a-vis ukraine? >> yes, my favorite mexican proverbs, they tried to bury us but they didn't know we were seeds. this candidate is up against the ropes and does his best, whether it's fighting the nra, climate change, protecting women. when he's up against the ropes he does best. that's why putin doesn't want to face him, that's why they're

trying to interfere in the election because he doesn't want to face joe biden. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you. more "a.m. joy" coming up next live from las vegas. needles. essential for the sea urchin, but maybe not for people with rheumatoid arthritis. because there are options. like an "unjection™". xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate.

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try to win by attacking, now, we know the trump strategy- distorting, dividing. mr. president: it. won't. work. newspapers report bloomberg is the democrat trump fears most. as president, universal healthcare that lets people keep their coverage if they like it. a record on job creation. a doable plan to combat climate change. i led a complex, diverse city through 9-11 and i have common sense plans to move america away from chaos to progress! i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

in just a few weeks the 2020 u.s. census will officially begin. and we know just how crucial the census is for determining the number of house seats, for redistricting and for allocating money to all of our communities. now after having failed at getting a citizenship question added to the census which would have likely resulted in lower response rates from immigrant families and an inaccurate count, republicans are returning to sending out deceptive mailers. they're sending them out in california, on blue paper, similar to the format of the census form.

they're labeled official documents, do not destroy. the response date is this monday, february 24th. the l.a. times which was first to report on this particular mailer says, quote, included in the envelope is a four-page letter from the rnc chairwoman asking for donations to the party in a promise to support trump in 2020. unlike the official census form, the rnc survey is made up largely of political questions, such as whether race relations in the country are getting worse and political correctness is getting out of hand. the trump campaign defended the mailers saying it's coming from the rnc. the l.a. times story talks about people calling rnc officials and saying they stop mailing these to their elderly families and fooling them into thinking

they've mailed out the census already. this is what the official census looks like, and it would never ask for donations or opinions on issues. do not be fooled by these republican tricks, america. meanwhile, do not forget watch our continuing live coverage of the nevada caucus at 2:00 p.m. on msnbc. there's more "a.m. joy" after the break. ♪

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in the late 1990s, i kept warning about the coming crisis over mortgages. how these mortgage companies had figured out that they could target communities of color. i've got a plan to build 3.2 million housing units across this country. i got it fully paid for. and just one quick thing on the housing. it's housing across the board. it's housing for middle class families who want to be able to have a chance to buy a home, for the working families, the working poor, the poor poor. >> practically every 2020 democratic candidate, including senator elizabeth warren has spent the days leading up to the nevada caucus vying for the crucial support of working class voters. just last week the culinary union, right here, ultimately declined to endorse a democratic candidate for president. around at the same time the culinary union had a rift with the bernie sanders campaign.

sanders addressed this tension at the democratic debate on wednesday. >> let me be very clear to my good friends in the culinary workers union, a great union. i will never sign a bill that will reduce the health care benefits they have. we will only expand it for them, for every union in america, and for the working class of this country. and if there are a few people who make ugly remarks who attack union leaders, i disown those people, they are not part of our movement. >> joining me is daniel wasek, a precision machinist who wrote an article, "a lack of respect for the working class today". also joining us is jess morcales. thank you for being here. inside this state, in nevada, we know the share of households who are union households is 19%. we know that unions have lost a

lot of the political power and potency that they had over the decades in this country but they're still a strong hold here. when you talk to members of your organization, what do they care about? what is concerning them as voters. >> domestic workers are unable to unionize. it's illegal for them. so they talk about the need for collective bargaining and be included. right now we have our federal bill of rights that's designed to right literally 80 years of wrongs. if you're in nevada and not talking about immigration, you're doing it wrong. that comes up over and over again. i say the last thing that's important is our folks are looking to experience economic prosperity personally, not just hear about it, or have people say there's a policy that's going to make a difference for

them. but actually know and experience in my lives i have more money in any pocketbook or health care became cheaper, it became easier to send my kids to a good school. they don't always feel that, even if policies are meant to. >> you have domestic workers doing the work that keeps the rest of the country functioning, people working in jobs that are crucial to the economy but don't get to experience a decent life they expected that their parents may have been able to. for all working class people -- let me read a little bit of what you wrote. you wrote someone needs to do the nuts and bolts hands on work that keeps our country going. and those who do deserve more than hardship for their efforts. before i just -- i want to read you a couple things. a guy named or ren cast tweeted he said popular perception is

correct, in 1985, the typical male worker could cover a family of four's major expenditures on on 30 weeks of salary. by 2018 it took 53 weeks. and then, the 1996 grand caravan did not have features that the 2018 did not. but you still needed $8,500 more to buy them. >> i've travelled all over the united states. i lived in many states. everywhere i go, i find the people doing the work that needs to be done to keep our country functioning are treated like losers for doing it. there's a sort of general overall attitude that has

changed over the last number of years. i'm a machinist, and -- that used to be a highly respected profession. but now it's looked down upon. i get dirty at work and i'm proud of that. i'm good at what i do. i make things. that attitude has changed and i think that's an important reason that we're in the situation we're in now. >> and just to stay with it for one minute, daniel, there's the trump argument he makes he says the industries of the postworld war ii era, machinists and steelworkers and coal miners, those things that used to provide a middle class life, he can revive them, but that's factually untrue. do people that you talk with believe it when someone says that?

or do they want to believe it? >> i think they want to believe it. but i think the overall disrespect for people who works with their hands, there's going to be a continued amount of the population that works with their hands. i think they want a decent life for what they're giving to our country. i think what they're doing, that's what's lacking, the establishment politicians over the last few decades have forgotten about that and that's got us in the situation we're in right now. >> and then, what is it -- how do you feel watching billionaires fight over this? millionaires and billionaires? even senator sanders is a millionaire, right? most of the people on the democratic stage are white and rich. >> right. >> they don't personally experience the kinds of want -- even mayor pete who's not rich but he's still affluent.

to hear them debate about what to do with the people you work with, how do you feel about that? >> it's hard. i work with domestic workers who make on average 11 to $13,000 a year. this is not hypothetical for us. they're calling us to say i'm under employed, i can't make my rent. then you have people talking about buying this election, i only have three houses, right, like it's tough. at the same time, i do think that more than any other race that we've had in a long time, candidates are having a robust conversation about what to do about the working class. i want to hear them talk about poor people. >> that's a great point. >> i represent poor people. there's nothing wrong with being poor. i really appreciated what daniel said about people who work with their hands. home health care workers are about to be one of the biggest sectors of the economy, it shouldn't just be the concern of me and the people i respect that those are the next big section

of jobs. it should concern everyone because right now those jobs are not well paying jobs and if the next sector of the economy is not well paying, that's going to affect everyone in our country. i want the candidates talking about the poor people, what they're going to do, and about how they're going to make sure people have dignity and respect. that's what we're asking for, if we have dignity and respect on the job we would see higher wages, less sexual harassment, we would see people who didn't disrespect us because we're the nanny's who take f of your kids or the women who clean your house or the people who take care of your elders. that's some of the most important work that exists in the economy. >> you're right. we have another poor people's campaign, that's where we are in america. it's not just about the middle class and who has a 401(k). let's talk about the poor as well. thank you so much for being here

to represent very important people in this country. daniel and jess, thank you for being here. i want to make a quick clarification on a story we reported earlier, this misleading mailer designed to look a census form it was sent by the republican communities, it was not just sent in california, it was sent all over the country. so if you see this, it is not the census. what's on the minds of nevada voters? you'll hear from them next as we're live from las vegas. leftovers?

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yeah, it's pretty exciting for me. >> nearly 20% of eligible voters in nevada identify as latin-x. just a few hours from now, many of them will be headed to sites around the state for the first in the west caucus. and notably, these are the first ballots in a state that isn't 90% white. more than 70,000 have already voted. they added a four-day window a hybrid caucus this year. already approaching the 80,000 total in caucused in 2016. tremayne lee joins me now. i'm going to jump in to some of the sound, the question, the q&a you did. here's frank banitez, you asked about voting for a personalty

versus what they proposed? >> i vote for what they propose. if i like what they proposed, that's who i will vote for. >> so it's who can defeat trump for you? >> yes. as long as the candidate has a good proposal, i don't care who they are. >> so no concerns, according to these voters about age and ethnicity and gender, that kind of thing? >> reporter: not so much, joy. we always think about the sophistication of the strategist and pollsters, but when you talk to everyday voters, they care about policy, what are you going to do to make sure my health care is suitable enough to take care of my aging parent or children? what are you going to do about the environment? especially in nevada immigration is a top concern. what are you going to do about the idea of children being snatched from their families and put in cages. i would ask the question time

and again. we started the campaigning with the most diverse field in history, you had julian castro, cory booker, kamala harris, does it matter we're back to an all white cast and they said that matters less than the policy proposals. so for these voters, they want you to come to the community with a plan and express that plan. >> absolutely. let's play another bite. this is just to the point you're making. what these latin-x voters want from a presidential candidate. take a listen. >> being nevada, having so many hispanic people living in here, just knowing what their needs are from education to a better working conditions, immigration. i mean, there's many things. >> well, my main interest at this moment is health care. >> health care is your number one concern? >> is my number one, yes.

>> and so, we just were talking earlier with jess morales who was saying for a lot of workers here, it's your daily life, about not being able to make a lot of money. sounds like that's what you heard too. >> reporter: right. when you think about the travel and hospitality industry in las vegas, a lot of their time is spent making ends meet and provide for their families. when they list those concerns, their issues in order, there's still a sense that politics aren't necessarily listening, even though nevada latinos delivered not just a democratic governor and both houses of the state legislature, there's a sentence that politicians aren't coming to the ground and speaking about their actual issues. when it comes getting through

day-to-day life and policies that matter, they want politicians to hear them and do something about it. >> you're headed to south carolina next? is that your next stop? >> reporter: that's right. i'm in california now for the next part of our race report series, where i'm engaging with voters a i long the trail, going into south carolina, the big question is which way will black voters cut, you have an older generation kind of supporting joe biden but there are a bunch of young people who are fluid. i'm excited to get to south carolina and see what folks have to say. >> very excited to see your next report. we love having you do this and having you part of the show. thank you very much, my friend. appreciate you. more "a.m. joy" after the break.

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and that is our show for today. "a.m. joy" will be back tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel. now i'm throwing it over to my friend alex witt. my dear, how are you? >> i'm well, thank you. >> it's chilly here. >> it's chilly here too. the reason i'm not there, there's no way they were going to let the two of us loose in las vegas together. you have a great day. >> the bellagio is right there just saying. >> i know. you have a lot more work ahead of you today. >> i do. >> good day to all of you from msnbc headquarters in new york, just about high noon in the east, 9:00 a.m. in the west.

welcome to weekends with alex witt. welcome to las vegas, candidates make the final pitches, the goal avoiding a repeat of the mess in iowa. russian meddling part two, now trying to help the bernie sanders campaign. it comes after a bombshell report that russia has already begun interfering to get trump re-elected. we have new reaction and details at this hour for you. just one hour from now, the caucus doors will be open for the people in nevada to choose a democratic presidential candidate. doors open beginning at 1:00 p.m. eastern to voters. alicia mendez is in las vegas today. she's going to share the stage with me for the next couple hours. welcome. it's the start